


Heart to Heart

by itsallAvengers



Series: Pulse-Point [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mind Control, Obligatory Hospital Waiting Room Scene, Slice of Life, very temporary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallAvengers/pseuds/itsallAvengers
Summary: This is how Steve and Tony juggle their lives- as superheroes, and as partners





	Heart to Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Commssioned for kellerkind, who wanted a continuation of the Pulse Point series! This is a story mainly focused on Steve and Tony's personal relationship, both the easy and the difficult bits, with minimal plot but Much Fluff.

Tony was tired.

 

Nothing particularly shocking, if he was being honest. In some way or another, Tony was always at least partially exhausted, if not physically, then certainly mentally. He had a busy life. He was an Avenger. These things were to be expected. But he hadn’t really been sleeping too great as of late, and after two weeks of unrestful nights, it was starting to take a toll on him.

He stifled a yawn into his hand and then rubbed at his eyes, checking the clock on his desk. 2:29am. The rest of Stark Industries was completely shut by that point in the night, everyone else having long since drifted off home. But Tony was catching up on all the work that he’d been letting build up over the past month or two, and so he’d chosen to stay up and try make his way through the ever-large mountain of folders and files. It was boring work, but easy. Allowed his mind to focus on other things; blueprint designs and team plans and such. His hand scrawled out a signature that Pepper had circled for him, and then he moved onto the next form absently, paper shuffling under his hands. He’d opted against music that night thanks to the headache currently threatening to spill into a full-blown migraine, and so the office was strangely silent. Just the crackle of paper and the scratch of a pen, and then the occasional click-clack of fingers on a keyboard. Pepper said that she enjoyed silence like this, but Tony couldn’t fucking stand it. Made him antsy as hell, if he was being honest.

He bit his lip and looked down, finally caving. It had been two hours since he’d last checked in- that was normal-ish, right? “JARVIS, give me Steve’s current resting heart-rate.”

“52 beats per minute, sir,” JARVIS informed him, voice quiet, “a little more elevated than when you last checked, due to the fact he just had a cup of coffee.”

Tony paused, and then nodded once, looking back down intently at the folder under his hands. 52 was a normal rate for Steve, seeing as his heart was naturally slower than most baseline humans. He was fine. Just like he’d been fine 2 hours ago, and 4 hours ago, and this morning, and the day before that. He really knew by this point, that he should just cut it out. It was weird. Steve was okay.

_He hadn’t been, he’d almost died, right there on your workshop floor-_

Two rapid blinks, and the thought was removed swiftly from his head, shoved back down into the drawer he’d stuffed it in since the whole debacle had occurred. 52 beats-per-minute was fine, and that was all Tony needed to know. He looked back down at his work and then signed off another paper, taking in a long breath and trying to keep his eyes firmly open. It’d been two, maybe three days since his last full sleep. He’d most just been living off naps and short rests, but that was it. He knew he was going to have to give in and go to bed properly soon, but he was just… busy, currently. That was all.

The nightmares he knew he was going to get didn’t exactly help either.

It sure was fucked up to be too afraid of your own subconscious to sleep, but hell, Tony had been doing it for years. His mind was a depraved little shithole when it wanted to be, and after the all-encompassing terror that had overwhelmed him when Steve had gone into cardiac arrest last week, Tony figured the whole ‘PTSD’ part of him would be going into overdrive. That much was already goddamn obvious, though- how many times had Tony checked Steve’s pulse by now? Probably over a hundred.

Fuck, he was tired. For the sake of his own fragile sanity, he should probably stop thinking about this shit.

With a sigh, he palmed a hand across his face and then opened up his phone. He was bored and tired and lonely, and as much as the little gremlin in his brain told him to shut himself off from the world and deal with all his shit alone, the other voice- the one that sounded suspiciously like his boyfriend- was louder, and it told him to do… well, the opposite.

 _You awake?_ He sent off to Steve, knowing it was a bit of a long shot. After no instant response, Tony put the phone back down and then tried to focus up on the letter in front of him, telling him he was expected at a meeting over in the Pennsylvania branch tomorrow at 7 in the evening. The new Stark product launch was only a few days away, and so it was all hands on deck until they were 100% sure everything would go smoothly. Which, in all honesty, was unlikely to happen anyway. Tony had been in this game for a long time. This sort of shit rarely went without at least one aneurism-inducing hitch. Of course, the crusty board members wouldn’t ever believe that, and tried to make him ‘behave’ every time they were about to release a new piece into the public. And by behave, Tony knew they meant ‘act conservative and don’t flaunt the fact you have a boyfriend or that you’re anything other than a straight-laced boring shitheel like the rest of us’.

And of course, every time, Tony rejoiced in setting fire to the letter they all signed and sent to him, and then going out on a very public date with Steve the next day. He really did wonder why they still bothered.

He grinned to himself as he opened up another email from Pepper, this one involving the agenda for tomorrow. A busy schedule, full of meetings and PR and an event opening down at MIT. The smile slipped. Goddamn it- he was going to need so much coffee to keep himself from blacking out tomorrow. So, so much.

His phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it. It was Steve, surprisingly. _Yeah. Too much energy to sleep right now. You gonna be home soon?_

Tony debated the question. He still had a hell of a lot of work, and if he went home then Steve would probably want him to sleep, which Tony wasn’t particularly keen on. But, at the same time… _Steve_. He hadn’t seen him all day, and if he got back any later, the man would probably be asleep when Tony got in.

 _Ten minutes,_ Tony sent back, mind made up as he lifted himself off the desk and stretched. Whether he did the paperwork now or in the morning, the pile of it would never really get any smaller. He’d much rather spend his remaining hours of consciousness doing something productive. Like Steve. Hah.

Fuck, he needed to sleep. His jokes were getting downright shitty, and that just wasn’t good enough.

He took a taxi home, unwilling to risk driving through New York while he was so tired. The guy tried to chat with him, and Tony could admit he was probably less than polite to the poor driver, but he gave him a hundred-dollar tip when he stepped out back home twenty minutes later, so he figured they were even.

With a sigh of relief, he looked up at the tower and yawned again. He’d have to be up again in a few hours. But until then, he had a boyfriend to check up with and a mattress to black out on.   
Home sweet home.

Their room was quiet when he arrived, wearily tugging off his tie and dropping his briefcase at the door. He thought Steve was still puttering around in the tower somewhere, until a minute or so later when he heard a brief trickle of water and looked up. The door to their bathroom was slightly cracked open and he peered through it, realising that Steve was actually in the bath, bubbles piled high around him as he relaxed heavily into the edges, eyes shut and beautifully serene. Tony smiled and padded forward, knocking a few times against the door before wandering in. “Good morning, beloved,” he said, hearing the exhaustion in his own voice.

It took Steve a second to open his eyes- a second in which Tony’s mind flashed briefly through the tiresomely familiar _‘what if he’s not opening his eyes because he’s dead, what if there was something in the bath salts and it somehow managed to send him into cardiac arrest, what if something happened—’_ but then Steve’s lip tilted upward, and the worries trickled out of his mind like they’d never even been there.

“Welcome home,” Steve said, cracking open an eye, “you’re late.”

“And you’re very attractive right now,” Tony raised his eyebrows and then got to his knees by Steve’s head, resting his forearms against the rim of the bathtub. Steve rolled his neck sideways and looked at him, tired and fond as he tapped his finger wordlessly to his mouth. Tony, the ever-loving boyfriend he was, complied and kissed Steve in greeting. “Always nice to come home to a naked and soaking-wet Captain America.”

“Mmm, nice to see you too,” Steve murmured, looking up at him through his long blond eyelashes, stuck together from the bathwater. “Wanna join me?”

God, that was tempting. Unfortunately, he had the feeling that if he got comfortable in the tub with Steve, he’d never end up leaving. It was hard enough to just sit here and _look_ at the other man without wanting to just curl up and shut his eyes. “How about you hop out and then we can both engage in that fun little activity that most couples would be doing at this time of the night?” He countered instead, running his fingertip across the damp skin of Steve’s arm.

Steve looked at him hopefully. “Blowjobs?”

“Sleep, Steve. It’s 3 in the morning.” Tony patted his cheek. “blowjobs can wait until I’m a little more coherent.”

Steve blinked a few times and then sat up from the tub, looking over at Tony somewhat analytically. Tony looked back with a tired smile, letting Steve pull him in for another kiss, even when the other man’s hands were uncomfortably damp around his neck. Things you did for love, huh?

Steve leaned away a fraction and looked at him, his gaze flicking down to the purple bags which circled Tony’s eyes. He frowned. “You been sleeping?” He asked, and from the way his face was set, Tony figured he probably already knew the answer.

He shrugged, taking Steve’s wrist and curling his fingers around it. The count restarted in his head, a subconscious action. 1, 2, 3, 4— “you know how it is,” he explained nonchalantly.

Steve sighed. Unfortunately, he did. Droplets of water glistened and trailed down perfect skin as he shifted, standing out of the tub and then looking down at Tony from his full height. Tony briefly reconsidered his previous statement about blowjobs when he got an eyeful of exactly what it was he was missing, but Steve moved and grabbed a towel before Tony could mention it, towelling himself off quickly and efficiently. Tony simply knelt by the bath and watched him shamelessly, chuckling when Steve pulled the towel through his hair and sent it flying out in all directions. He was the most adorable Supersoldier Tony had ever met, hands-down.

Steve pulled on his faded Henley and then slipped on some sweatpants before turning back to Tony, crouching onto his haunches so he was close and then knocking their foreheads together. Tony resisted the urge to purr—it’d only make Steve laugh, the asshole. “Let’s go to bed,” Steve said, giving him an absent kiss between words. Tony hummed, the warmth emanating from Steve’s body sending him even deeper into a sleepy state of relaxation. He wrapped his hands around the man’s broad shoulders and pushed into it, trying to absorb more of the body heat through the layers of his Givenchy suit. With a small laugh, Steve’s hands returned the embrace and before Tony knew it, he was being lifted up into the air by strong arms that held him steady. He blinked. “Hey, asshole, I can walk.”

“You weren’t exactly looking like it.”

“Yeah, well—” Tony huffed loudly and slumped into Steve’s chest. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Steady and firm and healthy. “Shut up.”

Steve laughed, and Tony figured he was probably rolling his eyes. He knew exactly what Tony thought about his methods of transporting Tony places when he wasn’t making to move on his own—he was no princess, thank you very much, and he did not need to be bridal carried. Although, admittedly, _occasionally_ it was… nice. Like now. Tony didn’t feel like using his legs at the current moment in time, so perhaps it was useful. Not that Tony was going to tell Steve that, mind you.

Steve manoeuvred them over to the bed in the other room and then gently settled Tony onto his side, crawling on top of him and planting a small litter of kisses across his face. It had to be getting close to three in the morning, and Tony was struggling to even keep his eyes open by that point, but hey, if Steve was feeling frisky, Tony was going to give as good as he got. With a half-smile and a small roll of his hips, he pressed his hand against Steve’s chest and slipped his fingers through the buttons of the man’s Henley. Although Steve smiled into the kiss, he ended up pulling away a second or so later. “Don’t tempt me,” he murmured, “we should both be sleeping.”

“You were the one who jumped straight onto blowjobs when I asked five minutes ago.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve leaned down to kiss him again, a familiar press of lips, “then I remembered you needed to sleep.” His hands settled, firm and big against Tony’s hips, and he squeezed gently before beginning to unbutton Tony’s shirt. “Don’t get excited, just givin’ ya a hand.”

Tony would like to point out that he was perfectly coherent enough to be taking off his own clothes- however, at the same time, he _did_ enjoy Steve looking after him. Just a little. When things were tough at work and when all the thoughts of the day were piling up in his head, unable to find release- when he was stressed and tired and the world was just a little heavier than usual- Steve was there, offering him a hand. Giving him a kiss. Showing solidarity. And it was indulgent, but it was good, and Tony liked to let himself have it a few times a month.

So he sat still, shut his eyes, and let Steve slowly undress him. One cufflink to the next, then slipping the fabric off his shoulders and neatly folding it at the side. Tony sighed happily when Steve placed an absent kiss across the surface of the reactor before he grabbed Tony’s faded band T-shirt from under the pillow and slid it over his head. “Arms up,” he said as he guided Tony’s hands through the fabric and slid it over his torso. Tony felt himself start to drift, pressed down onto the bed by Steve’s weight and the exhaustion that seeped through every layer of tissue within him. It’d been a long, long week. And Steve was warm, and soft, and home.

“Love you,” he mumbled absently, feeling Steve pull his socks off with a small tinker of laughter. He got another kiss for that.

“Love you too. Even though your feet kinda smell.”

“Fuck off.”

Steve just hummed in amusement and then moved to the buckle of his pants. Tony would probably have tried a little harder to seduce his boyfriend in that moment had he not been quite so exhausted, but as it was, he was content to simply let Steve pull his pants off without anything coming from it. Quite literally. Hah.

It was only when he felt a warm weight settled across his midsection and press into his side that he realised Steve had finished, and was snuggling down into bed with him. He must have fallen into a doze while Steve had been finishing up. He smiled to himself and then smoothed a hand over Steve’s arm, curling into the heat against his side until his forehead hit a solid chest. Steve smelled like the apple bathwash he’d used, and Tony wanted to bury himself in it. Stay here forever, where nothing was difficult or scary or wrong. It was all just _Steve_. And where there was Steve, there was an ease to Tony’s soul that he couldn’t find anywhere else.

His mind drifted to the left hand curled against Tony’s waist and the ring finger attached to it, empty and bare. That wasn’t right. Tony needed to fix that, at some point. Then everything really would be perfect.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8… on and on and on, the steady thrum of a pulse against Tony’s ear. He’d started sleeping against Steve’s chest after that whole fiasco with the cardiac arrest, and the constant pulse was like a lullaby, helping him drift off with the knowledge Steve was safe. He was okay.

Things were good.

Tony slept.

 

 

 

 

_

 

 

 

 

-And then four hours later, he awoke again.

 

No particular reason. Sometimes sleep just wouldn’t come and didn’t stay. He’d long since grown used to that fact about himself. But it always got worse when he was under stress, and what with everything that had been going on lately, he really wasn’t surprised when he blinked his eyes open and saw 7am staring back at him. Against his spine, Steve was still pressed up and sleeping peacefully, giving off little snores now and then. Tony was still for a moment, letting the noise of the other man’s breaths wash over him. His own chest felt tight, muscles wound up with a latent energy that had him tensing without even realising it, but he tried to settle back down and at least get a few more minutes of rest before starting his day again. He’d only regret it later, when he was sat at that dumb meeting in Pennsylvania and doing everything in his power not to fall asleep.

But, after another five minutes sat staring at the opposite wall and thinking of everything that he had to do and wasn’t, he ended up accepting defeat. Sleep wasn’t returning to him, at least not today. He needed to get up and do stuff anyway- it wasn’t easy trying to keep an entire company afloat while also juggling superheroism, but someone had to do it. Tony had thousands of livelihoods resting on his shoulders, after all.

He looked down at the slack arm resting around his waist, shutting his eyes for a brief second. He could feel it before he even knew it- today was going to be shitty. But here, now… God, it was just _so nice_. Steve was a grounding force that Tony always wanted to gravitate toward. Sometimes, he was the only thing in the goddamn world that could make all the thoughts stop, even if it was only for a moment. His presence was calming and when Tony was having bad days, he always just knew. And he’d make sure not to talk too loudly, make sure to not talk about Bad Things, and he’d touch Tony a lot because he knew Tony needed it.

Tony just wanted to stay in bed with him, and forget about the rest of the world. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t how things worked. Not any more.

With a sigh, he opened his eyes again and tried to take in a full breath, feeling the cold slip in through to his bones as he sat up and edged out of Steve’s hold. His body ached from exhaustion that sat deep inside him, but he was used to it, and he pushed it away while he shuffled over to the bathroom and splashed cold water across his face, checking the weather report as he did so. He had an appointment scheduled with marketing for 10:15, supposedly only taking twenty minutes for reshoots, but Tony knew it was bullshit. Those guys loved to get as much footage of his face as they could wrangle from him, so it’d probably be more like an hour. That was going to cut into his time at the office, so he probably wouldn’t even make much of a dent in all the paperwork he had left over from last night. Pepper was gonna be pissed.

He took another breath in, feeling the discomfort when his lungs failed to fill up enough. _Psychosomatic_ , the doctor had told him- but dammit, it sure as hell didn’t feel that way. The faint nausea roiling around in his stomach certainly seemed fucking real though, and he could feel the beginnings of a headache begin to prick just behind his eyes, so he popped a couple of aspirin and swallowed it down with water, just hoping to God it’d work.

Steve was still asleep when he came back into their room, lying motionless and peaceful, half his body still strewn across Tony’s side of the bed. Tony smiled at him for a moment, but it melted away back into a frown as soon as his mind properly got ahold of the thought. Steve was lying motionless. Because he was asleep. Clearly.

_He hadn’t been asleep last time, he’d been dead, his heart had stopped, remember that? You gonna just let him lie there again? Not even check?_

Tony blinked rapidly, hands flexing against his side as he shook his head. It was stupid. Steve was sleeping, because it was fuck’o’clock in the morning and he didn’t get up past 10 unless he had some pent-up energy he needed to run off. Steve was just sleeping. He swallowed down the urge to rush over to him, and instead walked stiffly over to his wardrobe, picking out the suit he was going to be wearing with shaking fingers. Behind him, Steve continued to sleep silently, face buried into the pillow so that his breaths were stifled. Not _absent_ , merely stifled. It was fine.

Pull on the tie, wrap it around, Windsor knot… wait, that was probably the wrong colour. Blue, not red- he was repping Stark Industries as opposed to Iron Man today, he needed the right colours. Which cufflinks? Was Steve breathing, or was he dead? The longer Tony left him, the worse his brain damage would be.

Fuck.

Cufflinks. He needed… there were loads in the little drawer to his left, so he pulled them out hastily and then looked over them, picking out the little arc reactors. They’d finish off the look nicely. And trousers—God, he’d almost fucking forgotten trousers. Dark navy, tight-fitted enough to give the board members something to squirm over. That’d be funny.   
Steve could be dead right now and Tony was just fucking ignoring him.

“JARVIS,” he gasped, already turning around and lurching out of his walk-in wardrobe and over to their bed, unable to hold off any longer, “pulse, now, give it to me.”

He really didn’t need to ask- he speedwalked as calmly as he could over to Steve and then pressed a gentle hand against his neck as JARVIS confirmed what he’d just felt. “49 beats-per-minute, sir.”

Fine. Absolutely fucking fine, of course he was- did Tony just think Steve had gone and spontaneously died in bed while he’d been brushing his goddamn teeth? Jesus Christ, he was so stupid. He swallowed and clenched his jaw, feeling a painful throb in his head as he did so.

“Mmm,” Steve murmured, shifting a little under Tony’s touch. He cracked open an eye, confused. “Mornin’.”

 _Act normal,_ Tony told himself, _act like you’re not a fucking mess._ “Good morning to you too, angel-face,” he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Steve’s hair before stepping back, “sorry for waking you.”

“S’okay,” Steve rubbed a hand across his face and then sniffed, curling into the warmth of their bed. “you’re up early.”

Tony nodded, turning back to their wardrobe. He still hadn’t picked out a belt. “Busy day,” he said lightly, “people to meet, products to launch, casual homophobia to deflect, you know that drill. Do we have Avengers Training today?” He turned back to look at Steve, now sat up on the bed fully, his feet planted on the wooden floorboards. He was looking at Tony with a small frown.

“Supposedly,” he said, “but I’m thinking of rearranging it.”

“Oh- why?”

“Pretty sure half the team can’t even make it. Are you okay?”

Tony blinked at the sudden change of pace, checking his hands. Steve always noticed when they were shaking. “Fine,” he said, shooting Steve a reassuring smile, “just… kinda stressed, you know? What with—” he waved an absent set of fingers through the air before running them through his hair, “everything.”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded in understanding and then lifted up his arm, hand outstretched. He smiled over at Tony gently. “C’mere, Shellhead.”

Tony paused for a moment, before returning the smile and walking over. He still hadn’t put on any pants. He needed to get his head straight before heading out today, otherwise things were just going to be a fucking mess. With as much nonchalance as he could muster, he walked into Steve’s open arms and then shut his eyes when he felt Steve wrap himself around Tony’s midsection and bury his head into Tony’s shirt. His hands were warm and firm against Tony’s back, and he leaned into the hold, his head bowing as he curled his forearms over Steve’s shoulders and sank into the other man. Steve’s fingers rubbed gentle circles into the knots across his back. “Maybe you should take a day,” the man murmured, “stay in. The work will still be there tomorrow.”

Tony smiled. “That’s the problem, sweetheart,” he responded, “I can’t slack off. Not right now.”

“Don’t think mental health days count as ‘slacking’ any more.”

He stilled. “I’m fine, Steve. Nothing I can’t handle.”

Steve pulled away, just a fraction, and looked up at him. His eyelashes were stuck together with sleep, his hair still tangled and messy. He sighed, expression tainted with a tang of concern. But he didn’t push. “If you’re sure. Just call me at lunch-break, okay?”

“Of course,” Tony nodded and then, using all the willpower he could muster, pulled away and turned back to the trousers now lying across his desk. He yanked them on hastily and then picked up the buckle, looping it through the holes with slightly shaky hands. Caffeine deprivation, that was what it was- he just needed a triple espresso to wake him up and he’d be raring to go. “How do I look?”

From the bed, Steve cocked his head analytically. “Edible,” he said in the end, and it made Tony laugh.

“That’s the goal, Precious,” he winked and then posed briefly, watching the way Steve’s eyebrows rose in appreciation. “Don’t worry though, you’re the only one that gets to taste.”

“Hmm, should damn hope so,” Steve huffed and then flopped back down onto the bed, face smushed into the pillow. He cracked open one eye and watched Tony with his perfect smile, the sheets shifting over the planes of his back. Tony wanted to jump back into bed and do exactly what Steve had suggested: stay. But, unfortunately, duty called, and would probably not appreciate being fobbed off in favour of a morning blowie.

Shame.

“I’ll call you later,” Tony confirmed, grabbing his suitcase from the side of the desk and then his phone from off the nightstand while Steve eyed him, that little note of concern still tangible in his eyes. “Promise.” He gave Steve his most genuine smile and leaned down, kissing the top of his boyfriend’s tangled hair.

“Take care,” Steve called out as he made his way to the door, and Tony gave a thumbs-up behind him before slipping over the threshold and feeling the weight of the world begin to settle back down on his shoulders. Familiar, but still almost unbearably heavy. Tony shut the door to their room and then let the smile fall straight off his face, replaced with a sigh. His head fucking hurt. He didn’t want to leave Steve. Something could happen while he was gone, and then Tony wouldn’t even be there to help him. There could be an attack, there could be a malfunction; a myriad of different events could conspire, and Tony would only know about it when he got a call, which could be hours later.

He tapped his hand rapidly against the hard surface of his phone and then took another breath. Fine, it was fine, he was just antsy. Nothing would happen. The likelihood was slim to none, and he knew that. He knew the math, the statistics. He just wished his brain would fucking listen to them for once.

 _Shut up, quit whining, and go promote your fucking company_. He straightened his back and adjusted his tie, taking a step forward before pulling back and twisting around, opening the door to their room once more and sticking his head around it. Steve looked up from the bed. “Forgot something?”

“Yeah,” Tony grinned, “I love you.”

Then he shut the door again, content that all his morning tasks were complete. Of course, unwilling to let Tony have the last word, his phone buzzed as he got into the car, and he looked down to see Steve’s name at the front of his screen.

_Don’t run away before I get to say I love you back, asshole.  
I love you. _

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

It was an awful day.

Truly fucking awful. The new Advertising Manager turned out to be a complete fucking asshole, and the whole reshoot involved her trying to push him into acting sleazy on camera the whole time. The VR headset was something Tony wanted to put into the world because of the imagination it inspired, the people it allowed to help- and she tried to make him promote it like it was some sort of techno sex toy, which was totally not the angle Tony had wanted to use. He’d refused to say any of the jokes she’d given him, and when she’d handed him a martini for him to use as a prop and then told him to drink it in order to loosen up, Tony had had to just walk out. His issues with alcoholism were public knowledge, and most people at Stark Industries were very much aware that he’d been sober for nearly a year now- he didn’t usually have a problem being told to have a drink these days, but it just… hadn’t been the right time, and Tony couldn’t deal with it.

He’d left the room and thought about the stupid fucking cocktail for the rest of the day; the ghost of its tang coating his tongue.

The meetings had been boring and tiresome and interspersed with sly comments that Tony had been too damn tired to even respond to properly, the MIT opening had been okay until a bunch of protesters showed up and told him he was a bloodthirsty killer who needed to give up Iron Man and spend the rest of his life in jail, and he’d been so on-edge for all of it that he’d ended up nearly clocking Happy in the cheek when he’d tapped Tony on the shoulder.

He’d taken a moment to stand in the corridor and breathe, then pulled up Steve’s heart-rate on his phone, watching the steady pulses for five, maybe ten minutes. However long it had taken for him to count up to 1000 beats, anyway. It had helped, even if it was only for a minute or two.

But then he’d gotten a phone call from the PR team, and everything had gone to shit again.

It was the same old Goddamn story- almost every time a big product launch was underway for SI, a rival company would try to dig up dirt in order to put the stocks at risk. Old, boring tactics that usually just involved taking recycled material everyone had already seen before, and Tony was at least 90% certain Hammer Industries had something to do with it, because the whole damn thing stank of Justin’s creepiness.

But whoever it was didn’t really matter. What mattered was that they’d done enough digging into his past to find someone who’d apparently kept some rather incriminating footage without Tony realising, and by 1 in the afternoon it was all over the fucking internet.

So there was that.

He watched it through, unable to even remember their names correctly for a good ten minutes. He must have been fucking wasted. Pepper said that PR were handling it and the police were doing their usual investigative bullshit, but Tony happened to glance at the stocks and realised that none of it really mattered by that point. The damage had been fucking done.

“All attention is good attention,” Marley, his PR guy had told him, a tight smile on his face as he’d patted Tony’s shoulder, “the stock drop doesn’t matter, not in the big picture. Your name’s trending on twitter, and that’s exposure. The launch won’t be tainted by this.”

Tony had nodded and smiled and pretended that was what he fucking cared about, while he looked at the clocks and counted down the hours until he could just go home.

Steve called a few times, but Tony declined, knowing he wasn’t steady enough to talk to Steve and then survive the rest of the working day. Steve had a tendency to get Tony to bare his soul without even meaning to, and he didn’t have time to do that just then. Instead, he drank a cup of coffee and did not wish he could take it Irish, and then locked himself in his office to fill out the remaining paperwork, making JARVIS give him heartrate updates every five minutes. His head hurt, he felt sick, and his hands were stiff. Cold.

He was told to cut the day short by Pepper, in the end. She offered him a weary smile and a soft hand stroking across his cheek, told him it was all going to be fine, and in her head he knew that she was seeing the same headline as he was: ‘Stark’s sex-tape scandal’, bold letters, the blurry picture of his younger face plastered over all platforms of social media.

He wanted to go home, right up until he thought about how Steve was going to react, and then suddenly not even the tower offered relief. They’d done this before – the PR nightmares, the leaks. It was just a part of being famous, a part of Tony’s life that he loathed with a blood-curdling passion, but had simply learned to deal with. For Steve, though, it was probably still fairly new. And every time Tony went down, Captain America’s name went down with him. No doubt the trash mags would already be writing their _‘Figurehead of the American People… dating a whore?’_ news stories at that very moment. He’d seen it before. This wasn’t new.

Tony stayed in the office and didn’t take Pepper’s advice.

He wished he was just fucking better. Steve probably did too. Steve was going to see it and flip out- or maybe he already had. Maybe Tony was going to go home to find the other man packing his shit up and leaving.

 _He’s not leaving,_ the rational voice told him as he flexed his hands in front of him and willed himself not to shake, _you know he won’t. He’s stuck by you through worse._

Which was true. Steve had definitely been with him through the thickest of thicks and the thinnest of thins. But for all Tony knew, this could be the final straw. Reasonable enough- a video of Tony in a raucous threesome was currently circulating the internet, and that was something Steve Rogers should _never_ have to deal or affiliate with. He deserved better than that. Jesus Christ, not even a few weeks ago Tony had nearly gotten Steve killed with the whole lab-accident thing, and if that wasn’t an indicator as to everything Steve had to put up with in this relationship, then Tony didn’t know what the hell was.

By the time 7pm rolled around, Tony could admit he was a mess. The office felt like it was running out of air, even more so than it usually goddamn did, but Tony didn’t want to leave it in case he ran into someone and had to explain why he looked like he’d snorted three lines of fucking cocaine. He couldn’t write because his hands were too busy fucking shaking- this was a bad hit and he knew it. The episodes came and went, some of them worse than others, and Tony figured that the accumulation of all the stresses of his life had built up to lead to this, and now he didn’t even know how he was going to get home. He didn’t want to leave his office. He didn’t want to arrive back at the tower and see Steve leaving, or upset, or fucking dead, Jesus, who knew? JARVIS was giving him updates, but hell, there could be a glitch, or someone could have hacked him and started sending false information, _shit_ , Tony needed to go home.

He couldn’t go home.

He buried his head into his hands and tried to breathe. In and out, in and out, in and out.

Once he felt like he wasn’t being crushed quite so much, the email in front of him was brought back to the forefront of his thoughts. He had to finish it and get it off before midnight at the very least, otherwise about three different people would start yelling at him. Shaking fingers steadied themselves back onto the keyboard, and he lost himself in the steady clicking of keys, not bothering to proofread it before sending the email off five minutes later. He doubted it was even coherent, but hell, at least he’d done it. One little task ticked off the list, only eight hundred more to go.

Next were the blueprints that he had to approve and send back down to R&D. That required a little more brain-power, maybe even enough to distract him. It was engineering. He was good at that. “JARVIS, patch me through to Collins.”

Tony waited for the telltale crackle, but nothing came. A second later, JARVIS’ apologetic tones spoke up. “It appears Collins has taken the night off, Sir.”

 _“What?”_ Tony looked up sharply, “it is… we have less than 48 hours until product launch and he’s taken an early fucking night? I can’t… he annotated this and I have no idea what any of his shit writing is trying to tell me, what the…” He shut his eyes and calmed himself. It was alright. “Call his home number. I need him to translate this bullshit for me.”

“I cannot get a response out of that number either.”

Tony’s fist clenched. Don’t freak out. This was alright, he could just do something else. Wasn’t like there wasn’t a myriad of other tasks to complete, and the blueprints weren’t urgent. He just… God, why couldn’t Collins just answer his fucking phone? It wasn’t hard. Click a fucking button and help Tony try to translate whatever mess he’d made all over the graph paper. He’d just set himself up and gotten out his angle-measuring ruler and his pencils and now he had to go and put it all away again, so he’d essentially wasted five minutes of precious time. Fucking bullshit, he was firing Collins. Asshole.

Someone knocked on his door.

Tony jumped wildly, looking up at the opening door. He put his hand around the gun he kept under his desk, not too sure why. Comfort, maybe. Not that he needed it. It was Steve.

The man took one look at him and then sighed. “Oh, Tony.”

“I am going to fucking fire Delaney Collins,” he responded instantly, knowing that Steve had no idea who that was, but needing to get the words out anyway, “fucking idiot sent me these stupid prints that I can’t make any fucking sense of, it’ll take me hours to try and work it out from scratch and I don’t have time, he cut his day short and I can’t even get ahold of him now, fucking Christ, I’m firing him. I’m firing him.”

“It’s 11 at night, sweetheart,” Steve slid gently into the room and shut the door. “He’s probably gone home and fallen asleep.”

Tony paused. “It’s eleven?”

“Yeah.” Steve rounded the desk and then crouched on his haunches, looking up at Tony in concern. “How you feeling about me touching you right now?”

Steve’s face was calm and earnest. He didn’t look angry like he should be. “I’m sorry,” Tony said as soon as he remembered what the other man had probably seen on the internet that day. Then he realised he’d ignored Steve’s question, and blinked. “That’d be nice.”

Steve’s arms wrapped around his waist, and Tony shivered violently, sinking into it. “I’m sorry,” he said again, gripping Steve’s shoulders with unsteady fingers, “you saw it, right? Jesus, this is a mess. I know this sucks. I’m sorry—”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” Steve said calmly, voice low and reassuring. Tony shut his eyes and pursed his lips. “This was not your fault. Someone just violated your privacy and leaked that video without your consent, and we’re going to find out who. I’m not mad.”

“They’re going to ask you about it,” Tony said throatily, “they’re gonna… say shit. About you. For being with me. I’m sorry. It’s all corporate BS, they try to start smear campaigns and make the stocks drop, it’s business, but usually they don’t find any new material and—you know, it’s just—”

“Tony,” Steve pulled away and settled his hand across Tony’s cheek, “I don’t give a single shit. I’m incredibly angry at the person who did it, and they’re going to pay for it, but I promise, I am not upset with you.” He pulled Tony in again, fingers stroking across Tony’s jaw and into his hair as Tony just sagged into him. He was so, so tired.

“We’re gonna go home, alright?” Steve asked, “and I’ll make us something to eat, and then we’ll go to bed and you’re gonna get a good night’s sleep.”

Tony shook his head. “I have to—I’ve still got work—”

“I know, but it’s not going to be finished when you’re like this,” Steve gestured around the room, “you know it won’t. I shouldn’t have let you go to work this morning in the first place, or at least warned Pepper about it first, and that’s on me. But right now, I think you’ve had enough today. I’d really like to take you home. It’s not going to make any of the problems go away, per se, but I think it would help. You up for that?”

He didn’t want to leave, but if he stayed any longer he felt like he might be physically sick. His whole head was a complete fucking disaster-zone by that point, and he could hardly even tell which direction was up any more.

Maybe sleep was a good idea.

“Kay,” he muttered, nodding, “I… yeah, alright. Cool.”

Steve smiled at him and then stood slowly, holding out his hand. Tony tried to compose himself a little, taking one last look at the blueprints before grabbing Steve’s hand and letting the man pull him up. They walked out of the building like that; Tony keeping his eyes on the floor, trying not to imagine the last few stragglers looking at him as he and Steve made their way to the garage on the bottom floor. He wasn’t even sure why he cared, but it felt like a dozen eyes were burning holes into the back of him as they stared. He always got paranoid after leaks to the press.

“Why’d you come get me,” Tony asked as he slipped into the inconspicuous black car Steve had driven up in.

Steve dropped into the driver’s seat and slotted the key into ignition. “Pepper got in touch,” he explained, “said you weren’t doing too great.”

He huffed. “She worries too much about me.”

“I think she worries just the right amount,” Steve looked over to him, settling his hand firmly against Tony’s thigh, “I’m very glad she called. Don’t like the thought of you being alone when all this is going on.”

Tony just sighed, leaning his head against the headrest. He could feel his heart beating, too fast and too loud under his ribs. It ached against the bottom of his reactor, but he focused instead on Steve’s firm grip against his leg. His hand was warm. It was nice. He still wanted that fucking Martini, and the need was sitting uncomfortably on his tongue. He was sure he’d never used to get this stressed out and anxious when he’d had alcohol to ease the way.

Steve’s hand. Focus on Steve’s hand. Steve, Steve, Steve.

The New York roads were busy as ever, and Tony watched the lights of the city pass him by while Steve drove them home, one hand on the wheel and the other a firm weight against Tony’s thigh. He briefly looked sideways, checking the other man was wearing a seatbelt. He was. Steve was a stickler for road safety. Not that a seatbelt would help all that much if, for instance, a truck was to lose control and hurtle into the side of their car right now. The model Steve had picked wasn’t reinforced. Just any other company car. Could probably withstand an impact of about 30,000 Newtons, if his math was correct. And Steve was going two miles above speed limit. That lowered the number to about 29,000 Newtons, actually. Would that be the difference between life and death? Probably not.

“Slow down,” he said anyway, his voice sounding way too urgent over those 2 stupid extra miles, and Steve turned to him in mild confusion before taking his foot off the peddle just a little. He watched the speedometer go back to the limit, feeling like a complete fucking idiot.

“That alright?” He asked.

Tony looked away. Well—now he could add humiliation to the list of shit that he was currently feeling.  “Yeah,” he mumbled, “yeah, that’s fine. Thank you.”

Steve nodded and squeezed his thigh again, and for the rest of the trip he made sure not to go over the limit. He was good at the little things like that. 

They arrived back home three minutes and fourteen seconds later, and Steve was already opening the door for Tony before he’d even undone his seatbelt, offering his hand once more. Tony couldn’t help but laugh, rolling his eyes a little. “Why, Captain Rogers, you’re _such_ a gentleman,” he said, taking the outstretched hand. Steve didn’t seem fazed by the teasing, however- just smiled at him and then pulled them over to the elevator.

In the tower, the world felt quieter. They didn’t meet any of the team while Steve fixed them up some sandwiches, but Tony felt himself be calmed by the fact that he knew they were present all the same, sleeping in the floors above and below him. It felt like protection from all sides.

“Eat,” Steve told him, and Tony could admit to himself that he wasn’t feeling particularly hungry, but the resolute look in Steve’s eyes told him that the command wasn’t exactly up for discussion. So he caved and chewed slowly while Steve texted on his phone, to whom, Tony didn’t know. His face was set determinedly, shoulders hunched up as his fingers moved. He made sure to keep his ankle wrapped around Tony’s as they both sat at the table, though, and as soon as Tony was finished eating, he dropped the phone and looked back up with a smile. “Bed?” He asked, voice hopeful.

Tony bit his lip. Every muscle felt like it was ready to start sprinting, and he wasn’t sure he could settle right now. His mind longed for the reprieve of a drink- whiskey always eased the anxieties in his mind and let him sleep, back before he’d decided to go sober.

But Steve was looking at him with his calm face and his questioning smile, and he quite clearly wanted this for Tony. Even if Tony didn’t want it for himself. So he nodded instead, and without another word, Steve took them both up to their room. It was dark when they got there, only the pinpricks of light from the city below them shining through the windows to guide their path. But Steve led them firmly and confidently, and Tony followed without question. He eventually flicked the lights of the bathroom on, handing Tony his toothbrush.

Ten minutes later, and there were no more steps to take. Tony was ready to sleep. His mouth tasted like toothpaste and yet he still wanted it to taste like Malibu instead, feel it burn its way down his throat. He had no idea why tonight of all nights was so bad. Objectively, he’d gone through worse. It was probably that stupid Goddamn cocktail. The stupid fucking advertising manager. His own stupid fucking self.

Steve was looking at him in question, and Tony couldn’t stop the admission from falling off his tongue, rapid and a little too fearful-sounding for his liking. “I _really_ want a drink, Steve.”

There was a poignant silence within the four walls of their room as Steve stilled all movement on the bed next to him. Tony bit his lip and looked down at the covers resolutely, knowing how weak-willed that must sound. One bad day, and Tony already wanted to throw back a glass of something or another, uncaring of all the progress he’d made over the past 11 months. Fucking pathetic.

Steve shifted, then, slipping back out of the covers. Tony briefly panicked and thought that he was going to walk out, but instead he headed over to the desk, bending down a little and pulling open one of the drawers. Tony watched him pluck something out and then turn back around, fist closed. He got into bed again and pulled Tony’s hand up, placing the sobriety coin into the flat of his palm before closing Tony’s fingers around it and covering them with his own. Tony just stared intently at their hands, feeling the cool surface of the coin against his sweaty skin. His hands, he realised, were shaking.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Want is a universal thing,” Steve said quietly, filling up the heavy silence with his beautiful voice, “but resistance isn’t. The fact you’ve done the latter is something I’m _so_ proud of, and something I know you’re proud of too. Just remember that, alright?” He kissed Tony’s hand lightly, waiting for Tony to nod in understanding before he settled back into the pillows once more. “You really should sleep. It’s been a long day.”

Damn fucking right it had. Tony laughed, and metal coin begin to warm up under his clammy hand. “It’s all still going to be there when I wake up. The work and—and the want, and the fucking… everything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty sure I do, Steve.”

The man sighed, pulling Tony into his arms and rolling his knees up so they were pressed against the back of Tony’s own. His nosed along Tony’s spine, kissing his shoulder. “Okay, maybe you do. But don’t you think it’ll be easier to deal with when you’re not running on half an hour of sleep and the adrenaline sourced from a day of panic-attacks?”

Okay. Point. Tony rolled his eyes and let his head drop, Steve’s warmth seeping through his bones, relaxing his muscles. He pushed his thumb lightly into Steve’s wrist, starting up another count. They were firm and true, and the steadily-climbing number helped give him something to focus on that wasn’t… everything else.

Steve’s heartbeat was its own sub-division of drug. Fast-acting, calming, an easy way to numb all the panic. And it didn’t cause him liver failure if he took too much of it, which was a nice plus.

It took 2146 beats to finally send him to sleep, but he drifted off with the assurance of it resting under one set of fingers, and the AA coin resting in the other. Both of them promises that he had to keep.

 

 

_____Steve_____

 

 

 He waited until Tony was fully asleep before slipping back out of bed. No part of him felt even remotely like resting in that moment- not when he still had plans to arrange and lawsuits to file against whichever sick bastard it was who’d released that tape. Much as he loathed to slip his arms away from where they were wrapped around his lover’s body, he knew it was a necessary sacrifice to make as he padded silently out of the room and then shut the door with a quiet click. “Tell me if he wakes, JARVIS,” Steve murmured, hearing the AI’s affirmation before he marched down to corridor. There was tension in his body just waiting to be released, and now that Tony was out of sight, he allowed himself to set his face into what he’d wanted it to look like all night: an angry scowl.

Tony had been dangerously close to breaking point today, and Steve knew that if this kept up, he was going to get sick. His heart was already weak, for God’s sake- he didn’t need this stress, and Steve should absolutely not have allowed him to leave that morning without putting up more of a fight about it. He’d known that Tony was on edge. It’d been obvious from the moment he laid eyes on the other man. He should have done more.

And now there was that God-awful video to contest with, too. They’d been working all day, but they still hadn’t found a source. It was fucking infuriating- the person responsible deserved to be brought to justice over it. Doing something like that was completely sick— and dear god, Tony had looked so young in the video, too, Steve wasn’t even sure whether he’d been legal at the time. The thought made him shudder violently. If it felt bad for him, God only knew how Tony was dealing with it.

Well. He was, apparently, dealing with it by considering alcohol again. If he’d admitted to Steve that he wanted a drink, it must have been intense enough that he needed someone to know and therefore keep an eye on him. And that… that was not a good sign.

It felt like the past few months had just been one stress after another. Steve didn’t want Tony to wake up tomorrow and go through the same thing that he had today. He was going to snap under the pressure, and when Tony snapped, bad things happened. Reckless, dangerous things that involved injuries or, on one gut-wrenching occasion just over a year ago now, a trip to the hospital for a stomach pump.

That wasn’t happening again. Not on Steve’s goddamn watch.

He palmed a hand over his face and then headed over to his office on the other side of the hall. His phone was buzzing repeatedly in his back pocket as it had been all day, but Steve ignored all of the messages in favour of pulling up Pepper’s number and then dialling it instead. He knew that she was still awake- they’d been texting back and forth for the past few hours. Sitting down in the chair behind his desk, he flipped open the computer lid and then slipped the phone between his neck and ear, waiting until the call went through before beginning to talk.

He spent the next few hours hunched over his laptop, searching for exactly what it was that he was looking for while planning and going through everything with Pepper. The product launch was at midnight tomorrow, and so Tony’s schedule was even more crammed than it usually was, but with the help of Miss Potts, he managed to rearrange and clear out Tony’s agenda for the next five days. She assured him it wasn’t going to negatively affect anything- these were just promotional extras that Tony chose to do, and it would make no difference if they got someone to step in last minute, and all emails or blueprints could be taken and done anywhere in the world. Which was useful, because Steve hoped that they wouldn’t be anywhere close to a damn office for a little while.

Most people wouldn’t think Tony Stark could survive for a single minute outside of city life, but they didn’t know him like Steve did. Back when Ultron had been on the loose and they’d gone to take refuge at Clint’s farm, Steve had noticed how… comfortable Tony had seemed in the environment. It had been clear that he’d quite liked the serenity of it all, and despite the fact that a giant maniacal AI was trying to kill them all at the time, Tony had seemed calmer than Steve had ever known him. Truth was, Tony really did like that sort of thing. As they’d gotten closer and eventually begun to date, Steve had realised as much pretty quickly. Tony loved technology, sure, but he was more than happy to be without it, too. Steve hadn’t missed the soft smiles and bright eyes whenever they’d had an excuse to get out of the city and into the country for a little while, even if it was only for missions.

Steve just hoped that this would go down well. Of course, he wasn’t going to push. If Tony insisted on staying, there wasn’t exactly much Steve could do- but he had the feeling that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Tony wasn’t a dense man, not really. He knew when he’d taken on too much, and what his limits were. Steve knew them too.

God—he just wanted to make sure Tony wouldn’t do something he’d regret. Steve had made sure not to react to Tony’s words, but hell, the man’s admission earlier had scared him.  Tony was without doubt the strongest man that Steve knew, but sometimes the amount of responsibilities piled up on his plate would be enough to topple God himself. Steve just wanted to help.

It was 2 in the morning by the time he managed to get back to their room, everything finally arranged and sorted. He felt sleepiness pull at his eyelids as he slipped through the door, but he had a few more things to do before he slept. Pulling out their suitcases from under the bed, Steve slowly began to throw his own clothes into it, making sure to be silent and not wake up his lover as he got some well-deserved rest. He didn’t much care for his own wardrobe, but he knew Tony did, so he spent a little bit longer picking out the outfits that he hoped Tony would like. Tony was probably going to pack a whole other suitcase the next morning despite all his efforts, but hey, it was the thought that counted.

Tony hummed sleepily when Steve shuffled into the bed next to him five minutes later, and Steve smiled, gently pulling Tony into his arms. His eyes fluttered briefly as he rolled into Steve’s hold, but he didn’t wake and a few seconds later he was back to snoring gently into Steve’s shoulder. He’d probably wake up covered in drool, which should really be a gross thought but honestly, Steve couldn’t say he cared. His fingers curled around the back of Tony’s head and he played with a little loop of dark hair for a second before letting his head rest back down upon the pillow. He probably wasn’t going to sleep that night—not when his emotions were still running haywire in his head—but for now, he was just content to hold Tony in his arms and try and imagine that it helped in any way at all.

Tomorrow would be better. Steve would make sure of it.

 

 

 -

 

 

He awoke when Tony’s alarm went off at 7, having gotten a grand total of about half an hour’s sleep. The incessant buzzing grated straight through Steve’s brain and he growled irritably, leaning across Tony’s body in order to flick the noise off and then snuggle back down into the warmth of his lover’s chest. He felt the vibrations of Tony humming, one hand rising to rub his eyes wearily. He’d had a good amount of sleep—thankfully undisturbed by nightmares or restlessness, but Steve would still be happy to see him getting a damn lie-in for once.

“Ignore it,” Steve mumbled into his chest, nuzzling in close, “jus’ go back to sleep.”

Tony laughed, settling a hand into Steve’s hair. “Can’t,” he said through a weary sigh, “got a meeting in an hour.”

“Nah,” Steve sighed happily, “ya don’t.”

“Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I do.”

“No y’don’t. Pepper cancelled it.” Steve blinked and then pushed himself upward a little, looking Tony in the eye with a nervous smile. “-And she cancelled the one after that, and the one after that… well, ‘rearranged’ is the term she used, actually, but the point still stands.”

Tony simply looked at him, his face blank. “Huh?” He sat up a little in bed, leaning back onto his elbows as he observed Steve with a curious face. “She wouldn’t do that. Today is product launch day. I can’t afford to cancel all of that now.”

“I promise that you can. Pepper and I were discussing it all night last night; she said your presence there isn’t going to make or break anything. They can get other people to step in for you, and you don’t _have_ to, of course… but I think you should take that opportunity.” He tucked a loose strand of Tony’s hair behind his ear and swallowed. “You need a break, Tony. This is killing you. I won’t force you into anything—but nothing terrible is going to happy if you miss a few days, you know?”

“Steve, that’s not the point…” Tony sighed and leaned back, head falling back into the pillows. Barely even a minute into consciousness, and Steve could feel the tension leeching back into his body under his hands. It was distressing to watch. “I have responsibilities—I know what I act like, but I do actually give a shit about my company—”

“No one gives more of a shit than you do, love,” Steve told him firmly, “everyone knows that. Pepper knows that. That’s why she let me convince her to cancel all your meetings and whisk you away to the middle of bumfuck nowhere for a relaxing retreat. If you want, of course,” he added with haste, glancing off to the side as Tony simply looked at him in confusion.

“I’m sorry, did you just say… ‘retreat’? As in, the non-battlefield sort of retreat?”

He couldn’t help but laugh as he nodded. “Yes, Tony. The civilian sort of retreat, with a farm in Ohio and a road-trip to get there, and no responsibilities at all for seven days. I’ve got everything set, if you say yes. Someone else can run my duties for a while, and I rescheduled my Op. And there’s good wifi so you can still talk with R&D or work on the blueprints.” He leaned his chin into Tony’s arc reactor and looked up at him through his eyelashes, shooting Tony his best puppy-eyed stare. “Say yes?” He asked sweetly.

Tony just spluttered, looking a little bit overwhelmed. “Steve,” he said, voice hoarse, “Steve, you Goddamn… you just rescheduled all my meetings like that without even… Dammit, I should be way more mad at you for doing that, what the fuck?”

Steve flushed and looked away, guilty. “I can—I’ll tell Pepper to put them back if you want, sorry, it’s just—”

“No, I’m not angry,” Tony interrupted before Steve could continue, shaking his head and huffing disbelievingly. “Did you arrange all this last night?”

He nodded. “I wanted to just… do something. To help.”

Tony’s face was soft when he looked at Steve, and a moment later he came to rest his hand against Steve’s jaw, thumb stroking against the light stubble just starting to dust his face. Steve smiled up at him, tilting his head further into Tony’s hold. “You didn’t need to go to all that effort,” Tony murmured, “I can handle this.”

“I know you _can_ , but it doesn’t mean you _should_ ,” Steve informed him. “Hey- remember when there was that really bad mission and it had me in a funk for days afterward? What did you do for me?”

Tony rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, undoubtedly to brush it off, but Steve didn’t let him. “You pulled me out of my office and you put me on a plane and told me to trust you. Then you took me to see Niagara Falls.” He smiled at the memory and watched Tony do the same in front of him, both of them remembering the cool spray from the truly beautiful view and the way they’d held one another as they stared at the sight for what seemed like eternity. It was a day that Steve knew he’d never forget, and had made him happier than he’d ever been able to expect, especially considering the week he’d had.

Tony always did so much for him. Steve just wanted to return the favour. “Come on,” he whispered encouragingly, squeezing Tony’s hip, “say yes. Let’s fuck off to Ohio for a bit, forget everything else.”

“I… I can’t—”

“You _can,_ ” Steve pleaded with him, running his fingers across Tony’s collarbone and then pouting, “I wouldn’t ask you if I thought it was going to be detrimental to anything in the long run. I’m a strategist, remember?”

Tony eyed him for a moment, worrying his lip underneath his front teeth as he mulled it over. “Definitely good wifi?” He asked quietly, and Steve smiled in triumph as he nodded and sat up, rolling off Tony’s side in order to land on the floor and pull out their suitcases from under the bed.

“Four bars, promise,” he said, “I’ve got our bags packed and ready, we can go whenever you say the word.”

“Did you even sleep at all last night?”

“For about half an hour, yeah,” Steve grinned, leaning onto the mattress and then looking up at Tony, who was just watching him with a mixture of incredulity and relief in his eyes. He pressed a kiss to the soft lips in front of him and then chucked him under the chin. “Run away with me, Stark,” Steve asked softly.

Tony paused for a moment, eyes darting around the room—out to the window, where the rest of the world remained, sharp and harsh and unforgiving. Steve had checked that morning; everyone was still going nuts over the stupid video. If Tony went to work today, no doubt that would be all he’d get goddamn asked about. Steve didn’t want that for him—not ever, but especially not now. He deserved peace.

Tony’s head tilted, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Why Rogers,” he said through a sigh, “when you put it like that, how on Earth can a fella resist?”

 

 

-

 

 

They left before the hour was up.

As Steve had promised, everything was set up. He’d made sure of it before hopping into bed that night, so that Tony had nothing to worry over in the morning. Of course, no plan was perfect, and Tony ended up fretting about this and that anyway, but luckily it was nothing that they couldn’t handle, and after another set of reassurance that it really _would_ be fine if Tony left for a little bit, Steve eventually managed to guide Tony into the spacious Jeep he’d picked out for the road. He even turned a blind eye when Tony wrinkled his nose at it—he wasn’t sure whether the guy was even aware they’d _owned_ a Jeep, seeing as Tony only ever drove around in his flashy sports models.

“Wanna stop off and get donuts for breakfast?” Steve asked him when he hopped into the driver’s seat, and once Tony nodded in agreement, he hit the gas and they were gone.

The trip down was fun; filled with loud rock music and junk food and their most valiant attempts at dancing while held down by seatbelts. Tony had thrown on some baggy jeans and one of Steve’s tshirts that was two sizes too big for him, and he looked comfortable in a way that Steve hadn’t seen in days and days. The man had been living in suits recently, and as beautiful as they were on him, they can’t have been comfortable. And Steve loved his casual looks just as much as his fancy ones, so there was really no one losing out.

They stopped at a roadside diner for more food along the way, stocking up on snacks while Tony dressed Steve up in a pair of ridiculously big sunglasses and an obnoxious baseball cap in order to help him blend in. No one noticed them, thankfully- or at least, if they did, they didn’t care enough to comment, and once their pancakes had been scoffed down they were back on the road again, bickering about the quickest way to reach the town where they were supposed to be staying. Steve called Tony names while his hand held onto the other man’s thigh, and Tony swore he regretted ever agreeing to the trip while he rested his fingers over Steve’s knuckles and drew absent patterns against the skin there.

It was wonderful. Steve was almost sorry when they finally arrived at their destination eight hours later.   
Almost.

“Is this it?” Tony asked, bouncing up and down on his seat as he craned his neck to look around the bend like an excited child, and Steve couldn’t help but chuckle as he nodded his head. “Oh, it looks all… serene. Nice. You’ve got good taste, Rogers, I’ll give you that.”

Steve pulled a face. “Course I do,” he muttered, “wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if I didn’t.”

There was a brief moment where he waited for Tony to stop sputtering. “You sap,” the other man said, looking slightly bashful as he rubbed at his neck and shoved Steve lightly, “let’s get out of this ugly little vehicle and see what our paradise is going to be for the next week.”

They both jumped out of the Jeep, turning to look up at the farmhouse ahead of them. Steve glanced sideways and gauged Tony’s reaction slightly nervously, wondering what he was thinking. But it didn’t seem to be anything bad—if anything, Tony looked pleased. He chuckled quietly and then shut his eyes, taking in a deep breath. “Fuck, it’s been a while since I couldn’t smell gasoline every time I inhaled. Is this what it feels like to breathe non-polluted air?”

Steve huffed and began to walk forward, hearing Tony fall into step beside him as he did so. The owners had said they’d leave the keys in the plant pot on the windowsill, and after a bit of rummaging he managed to locate them with a flourish, jimmying it into the lock and getting the thick oak door open a second later. “Temporary home sweet temporary home.”

The layout inside was simple, they discovered quickly. Lots of wood and faded blankets draped across well-loved couches. There was a spacious living room, a bathroom with a tub and a faulty shower, and a bedroom with a bed that was about half the size of what they were used to. Tony laughed when he saw the gaudy yellow covers, then laughed harder when he saw the saw the pillows that had been adorned with cow embroidery, throwing one of them at Steve to let him look.

“It’s nice though, right?” Steve asked slightly cautiously—the last thing he wanted was for Tony to get annoyed by being here—but Tony just shook his head and then stumbled into his hold, hands wrapping around the back of Steve’s waist as he buried his face into Steve’s chest.

“It’s perfect,” Tony told him, “thank you.”

Steve softened and moulded himself around Tony’s form, cheek pressing into the other man’s hair. He could feel Tony go still against him, ear pressing closer into Steve’s chest in what was clearly an attempt to hear his heartbeat, and Steve was happy to indulge him for a little while. “Sandra asked if we could milk the cows while we’re staying over,” he mumbled, before adding, “that’s the farmer’s name, by the way. Sandra and Owen. They were real nice to me.”

Tony laughed. “Bet they were; s’not often Captain America calls up and asks to steal your house for a week. They’ve probably left just assuming that aliens are going to come and ruin it or their cow is gonna be involved in a super-secret operation—”

“Nuh uh,” Steve rocked them gently back and forth as he shook his head, “No covert cows, no aliens. Just us. Having some fun.”

Tony’s head turned upward, and the cheeky glint in his eyes made his whole face look a little less tired. He slid his hand lower, dipping it under the waistband of Steve’s sweatpants. “Fun?” He asked, voice dropping.

Steve just rolled his eyes as Tony squeezed his butt playfully, digging around in his pocket with his left hand and hugging Tony closer with the other. “You know, you’re lucky you’ve got such an organised boyfriend,” he declared as he found what he was looking for and pulled it out of his pocket, waving it in Tony’s eyeline. “I even got it strawberry flavoured. Your favourite.”

Tony grinned lewdly and plucked the packet of lube out of Steve’s fingers, leaning up to kiss him with a hint of promise. “You know me so well,” he murmured, “now let’s bang while those little embroidered cows watch us from the armchair.”

“God, that’s gross,” Steve made a face and glanced over to the hideously designed pillow-cases while Tony tugged him back and then pulled him onto the bed, landing him right on top of Tony. “You’ve just turned me right off, I don’t want to have sex with you any more.”

Tony totally ignored him, instead choosing to lean up and capture Steve’s mouth in an altogether messier, hotter kiss than before. He slid his thigh between Steve’s and then rolled them both until he was on top, pushing his hips against Steve’s slowly and with purpose. Steve swallowed down the little noise that threatened to spill over his mouth at the sudden blunt contact. “That helped at all?” Tony asked as he broke away, voice slightly more out-of-breath than before.

Steve considered it, glancing once more over to the cows. “Yeah, actually-- you know what, I think I can manage,” he agreed hastily in the end, winding his hands around Tony’s neck so he could pull him back down with a laugh and a happy sigh.

They stayed in their room for hours as Steve did his best to worship every part of Tony’s body he was capable of worshipping. In times like these, when Tony was so used to being in a state of stress or frustration or sadness, it made something deep inside Steve feel so innately pleased to be able to bring Tony out of that—to make him smile and relax. Seeing Tony fall apart over and over underneath him was something Steve was sure that he’d never tire of. Not now or in twenty goddamn years.

Afterward; when Tony was spent and exhausted against Steve’s chest, curled into the space where he fit perfectly, Steve let himself check the phone that he’d ignored pretty much all day. There were some updates from Pepper, saying how all the demos and PR trips had gone smoothly, and the predicted figures were hitting above expected already. He checked the time: still a couple of hours before they released it to the public—apparently there were people queuing out the door for it, which was fairly typical in a Stark Product. Tony’s designs were the best in the world and Steve didn’t blame people for getting enthusiastic over them.

Of course, though, there was the other side of the coin. Littered throughout his notifications were messages after messages—enquiries from reporters asking for a statement, mentions on twitter about his ‘poor name being dragged through the mud’ by that _stupid_ goddamn video. Steve pulled a face and left that comment alone, but they were everywhere, plaguing his notifications. Tony’s PR manager had told him to just let it lie, and that it would fade away in a week or so, but still. It hurt, seeing them come for Tony like that, all for something he’d not even had a damn say in. It made his skin scrawl and his heart seethe with anger.

It only got worse when he heard Tony’s small “I’m sorry,” from beside him.

He turned his head sharply, gaze locking with Tony’s. He’d thought the other man was asleep, but at some point he’d woken up and started to look at the same phone that Steve was, full of all the bullshit from the past few days. The pinched look had returned to his eyes. “I know you don’t think it’s my fault,” he continued quietly, “but it doesn’t make this any easier for you. I don’t… I just hate putting you through this shit. It’s not fair you have to deal with my problems.”

There were a million things he wanted to say to that, but he wasn’t sure how to convey it without getting angry—not at Tony, but at the situation itself. It was just so unfair. Of course, though, Tony took his silence for agreement and Steve watched him avert his gaze, shuffling a little further away on the cramped mattress almost subconsciously. Steve quickly saw to halting that, however; pulling him back in and rolling him smoothly up onto his chest. When Tony looked mildly surprised by the action, Steve just leaned up and kissed him. The moonlight from outside shone in through their cracked-open window, illuminating the other man in a soft white glow. He looked almost ethereal like that.

“Tony, your problems are my problems—”

“I know, that’s the point, they shouldn’t be—”

“—Because I _choose_ to make them my problems,” Steve stormed ahead and finished before Tony could get anything else into his head. “Your problems are my problems because they upset you, and hurt you, and when that happens I just want to try and make them stop doing that. I want to try and fix them for you. That’s what being in a relationship is about, sweetheart.” He laughed and gestured around him at the strangely decorated room, full of weird off-yellow furniture and way too many pillows for his liking. “Why do you think I spent all night last night looking through Airbnb to find this goddamn farm in the middle of nowhere at the last minute?”

Tony paused, and then thankfully smiled a little. “I like the farm,” he said, “it was a good choice.”

“Of course it was a good choice, they’re the only sort of choices I make,” Steve raised an eyebrow and then trailed his hands up the curve of Tony’s spine and back down again, settling them at the small of his back. The video he’d seen of Tony yesterday came back to him; younger, skinnier, with eyes that had seemed even bigger than they did now he was older. He hadn’t watched all of it. Even now, when Steve knew every part of Tony intimately, it had still felt like too much of a violation of his privacy. But he’d seen the way Tony had been looking at the other two people in the video—trusting and nervous. He must have been young, to still be looking at his bed-partners like that.

“Who were they?” Steve blurted, the words falling out of his mouth before he could help himself. When Tony looked at him in confusion, Steve awkwardly waved a hand. “The people in the video. Do you remember them?”

Atop his chest, Tony stilled and was silent for a moment. Steve waited for a second before wondering whether it was pushing too far and beginning to start on a different subject matter, but then Tony shrugged, and that was answer enough. Steve watched his gaze avert, moving to Steve’s chest as he traced a small circle into the skin just above his sternum. “Just some kids from college,” he muttered, “only knew them from physics class, we were all pretty drunk, you know how it is. My legal team’s trying to track them down now.”

“Did you know they were taping?”

Another short pause. “No.”

“Were you legal?”

“Steve, does it matter?” Tony’s voice got a little snappier as he glanced back and frowned, pushing a hand through his hair. “It was years ago. It’s a fucking sex tape, I’m famous and they were probably offered a shitload of money for it, so they accepted. That’s all you need to know.”

Okay, so Tony didn’t want to go any further in the details. Fair enough. Steve shut his mouth and nodded in understanding. “Sorry.”

Above him, Tony’s jaw was tight, and Steve internally cursed himself out. He should have just dropped it. “It doesn’t matter, you’re right, sorry, I was just—”

“I was seventeen, nearly eighteen,” Tony informed him, body sagging as he rested his chin against the back of his palms and looked at Steve through the curl of his eyelashes. He shrugged again. “They were… God, I dunno, in their twenties, I think? Maybe 26-ish. I really don’t remember them that well.” At the look on Steve’s face, he just rolled his eyes and grinned resignedly. “Don’t freak out, Captain. I was more than willing, I pinkie promise.”

 _That’s not the point,_ Steve wanted to say, but he held his tongue and just focused on a little bit of Tony’s hair instead, curling upward awkwardly away from the direction of the rest of his strands. It was cute. He twirled his finger through it and tried not to think too hard about the millions of people who would have watched that video of his boyfriend when he wasn’t even out of his goddamn teens.

“Does it bother you?” Tony’s voice was firm up until the next part, when it started to waver just a tad. “Does it—freak you out, that that’s the sort of person you’re in a relationship with?”

He wanted to say no immediately, but then he realised that might sound forced, so he waited a second before just shaking his head, fingers trailing down Tony’s face absently. “Not even a little bit,” he confirmed, “I knew all that when I kissed you for the first time. The fame… it does bother me sometimes, I’m not going to lie. But only because I hate how they don’t treat you like you’re a human. They don’t stop to think before watching a video of an underage kid, because to them, you’re just… I dunno, _fictional_. That bothers me more than you could ever believe.” He pulled a face and sighed, rolling Tony back onto his side of the bed and then nudging up a little closer until their noses were touching. Then he dipped down, kissing the warm mouth in front of him. “But no part of who you are freaks me out. Apart from the fact you love orange juice but hate oranges. That’s just fucking strange.”

Tony spluttered in a surprised laughter, smacking Steve playfully. “Shut up. When you get rich enough, strange becomes ‘eccentric’, thank you very much.”

“Whatever you say, Stark,” Steve rolled his eyes and felt Tony’s breath on his chest as he laughed. It was comforting, and after that they didn’t say much else, happy to drift off in one another’s space under the soft moonlight of Rural Ohio. Tony’s fingers trailed aimlessly up and down Steve’s arms, centring themselves on his hands after a while and linking them both together lazily. His eyes were closed, mostly asleep, but Steve watched the faded smile twitch on the other man’s mouth as his touch traced ever-so-softly across the base of Steve’s ring finger. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it.

A few seconds later, his breathing evened out and Tony was asleep. Steve kept his eyes open for a few moments longer, just watching him breathe, and then he too let himself slip off into a peaceful doze.

 

 

-

 

 

The next few days were uneventful and dull and completely, utterly wonderful.

Tony woke up to updates from Pepper telling him that the launch had gone fantastically, and he spent most of the first morning on the porch writing out emails and finishing off design-work on his tablet, one eye watching Steve feed the chickens out in the front. The warm summer weather was pleasant enough that they spent most of their time outside, going out on walks and sitting in the fields to eat their lunch while Steve sketched and Tony read. He kept a close watch on his partner, making sure that he wasn’t getting worked up about anything and trying to keep it from Steve, but there was no need to worry. Tony settled into the routine quickly, and was more than happy to shirk all his responsibilities for a little while. The suits and business attire had been swapped out for soft pants and flannel, the delicately trimmed beard he’d been keeping meticulously on top of for the last few weeks was starting to grow out just a touch, and Tony had opted to take his glasses with him as opposed to wearing his contacts, so the frames were sitting cute and clunky on his nose.

He looked… relaxed. At ease. Gorgeous.

They tended to stay together for most of the time, unless Steve was going on runs in the morning or Tony needed to take some calls. Steve enjoyed getting to know the local village while he exercised, and was soon dragging Tony to all the little café’s he’d seen along his route and showing him the quirky antique shop that he’d seen tucked away and known Tony would probably appreciate. The man had a strange love for old random shit—Steve couldn’t really say he shared it, but he sure as hell loved watching Tony’s eyes go wide and excited as he held up a rusty silver dinner plate and demanded they put it somewhere in the tower.

It was nice to be away from it all for a while. No one noticed them in the village, or at least if they did, they didn’t bother them. The change of scenery was nice, and although Steve was a city boy through and through, it was certainly pleasant to experience the countryside and see a patch of grass that wasn’t hemmed in by concrete and brickwork. He didn’t even mind that he got sunburned almost every day from the hot weather and constant outdoor activity. Pale skin didn’t react all that great to sun, but he healed quickly enough. Tony, of course, only ended up tanning beautifully, skin going a deeper olive each passing day spent out having lunch on the grass or fixing up the tractor for the owners while they were gone.

Nights were mostly just spent curled up either on the faded brown couch watching TV or up in bed, doing roughly the same but with some more added heavy petting. Steve made a mental note to buy new sheets for the owners upon their return, and all cushions with farm animals on them had been hastily piled into the corner on the first night. There was something intensely off-putting about locking eyes with a smiling cow caricature embroidered onto a pillow while you were balls deep inside your boyfriend- although it had made Tony laugh very hard when Steve had mentioned it, so he figured it wasn’t a total loss.

There was another thing Steve had noticed while they were busy doing nothing, and it was that Tony seemed to be touching him more. He was affectionate as it was, and that was something Steve loved about him, but it seemed to be exacerbated these days. If he looked back over the past few weeks, he realised it wasn’t something that had been brought on by the short getaway either. Tony held his hand whenever he could. He laid on his side and rested his head against Steve’s chest in bed, even though Steve knew it must make the reactor ache. Whatever opportunity arose, Tony used it to keep him close. Steve didn’t mind, not in the slightest, but he was curious about it.

On the third day in, when Tony was busy at the kitchen counter preparing dinner for the two of them, he decided to just go ahead and ask. “You’re pretty touchy-feely these days,” he began casually, sliding up behind Tony’s back and observing what was cooking away in the pan. “Is there any particular reason, or are you just a little bit more overcome with love and desire for me than usual?”

Tony snorted and sprinkled a few herbs into the mix. Rosemary, it smelt like. “Oh, sweetheart, my loins are positively _burning_ for you, you must know that,” he said dramatically, lifting a hand to his forehead while he fell back and pretended to swoon. Steve, of course, simply caught him with a roll of his eyes.

“I’d expect nothing less, obviously,” he muttered into Tony’s ear, before blowing into it and then laughing as Tony yelped and squirmed jerkily, elbowing Steve in the ribs.

“Asshole!” Tony made to shove him but Steve ducked away from the flying arm, snuggling in close to Tony’s back again and resting his chin on Tony’s shoulder.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” he muttered, placing a placating kiss against the nearby skin, “but seriously—there a reason? Not that there has to be. M’just curious.”

Tony stirred the pan quietly for a moment, a small frown creasing his brow. His left arm moved up and his hand settled against Steve’s as it wrapped around Tony’s stomach. “It’s gonna sound a little weird,” he began, pulling a face, “don’t laugh.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Tony paused again, and then turned his head, looking sideways and over to Steve. “I like counting your heartbeats,” he muttered with a shrug. “Like to hear it. When I’m having one of my moments and everything just feels too loud in my head, or I’m stupid and anxious about something, I just…” he curved his fingers and pressed in, gentle, against Steve’s wrist, right over his pulse. Then he smiled. “And it calms me down. The counting, the rhythm. It’s nice. Especially after the whole—y’know—cardiac arrest thing.”

Tony’s face fell a little and he looked away. Steve just frowned and kissed him again. “Yeah, I know,” he agreed with a small nod, “I do the same thing. Kinda.” There was a short pause before Tony’s face turned into one of intrigue, and Steve took that as the cue to continue. “Sometimes, when I’ve had a nightmare, the only thing that keeps me from falling apart is the sound of your heart. If I hold my breath and stay still, I can hear it. And it—it helps me go back to sleep again. Nothing calms me down faster than hearing the sound of you… just being alive, next to me, _real_ , I suppose.” He felt his cheeks heat and pursed his lips. It sounded so childish when he said it aloud.

But Tony turned into him, hands slipping around Steve’s waist as he gazed upward through the decadent curl of his lashes. Steve was never going to get used to how beautiful Tony looked up close; something so strangely intimate and lovely about being the only person who got near enough to count his eyelashes or spot the little freckle just peeking out of his hairline. Things saved only for Steve.

“Nice ego boost to know that I can help you even when I’m not conscious,” Tony said with a smile, but there was a note of genuine care to his tone, and Steve appreciated it. Tony’s fingers skirted up Steve’s chest, fiddling delicately with the buttons at his throat. “I love you so much, you know that, right?”

“Of course I know that.”

“Yeah, but I just…” Tony blinked and looked up at the ceiling, smiling bashfully as he waved a hand around the room, “I just want to tell you again. You do _so_ much for me. _So fucking much_ , God, you whisk me off to Ohio when I’m upset and you chop wood with your shirt off just ‘cause you know I like it, and it’s been years now but I just—every day you do something that’ll surprise me, that’ll make me laugh. I fall more and more in love with every moment.” He chuckled and then tipped his head forward, burying it into Steve’s shoulder. “That was horrendously sappy, I know, but it needed to be said.”

Steve felt warmth bloom under his sternum and he wrapped himself around Tony, squeezing them both together and sighing happily. In another world, he could just stay here with Tony forever. It was perfect out here, truly perfect. No responsibilities or worries, no aches and injuries, just peace. Miles of field around them, with evening board games and inevitable shouting matches that resulted from it.

Bliss.

“I’ve gotta let the ingredients stew for a little,” Tony murmured, angling his face so it became pressed into Steve’s neck instead, hot breath ghosting across bare skin, “how about I show you just how much I love you while we wait?” His hand dropped lower, skimmed the front of Steve’s jeans and okay, yeah, he could definitely accept that offer.

“By all means, demonstrate,” he responded, ducking his head and then nudging Tony back until he was able to be kissed, slow and deep. Tony was smiling against his mouth as he pushed them backward until Steve hit the table behind them, and the grin was still on his face as he sank to his knees on the kitchen floor.

 

Needless to say, dinner got burnt.

 

 

_____Tony_____

 

 

He made the decision that he was going to ask Steve to marry him on the third day of their getaway.

The thought just fell into his head, so easily and without any trepidation. He’d been watching out of the window in their room while Steve fed the chickens, having a gentle conversation with them in the same way Tony did to his bots. It was ass-o-clock in the morning, and Tony had hardly been awake, only roused by Steve getting up to complete the chores, and as he’d leaned against the open window and felt the breeze push against his face, he’d looked down at his lover and thought _‘I really do want this forever’._

The prospect of proposal just came as a natural progression after that.

Tony had padded back into their bed and fallen asleep shortly after with the thought playing through his subconscious, and by the time he’d awoke to the smell of bacon and the sound of Steve’s singing drifting through the floorboards, his mind had been made up: he was going to propose, and it was going to be perfect. He was going to make it everything that Steve had ever dreamed of, because he knew that Steve would do the same for him, and his goal in life was to be half as good as Steve was at all this. Tony knew he was messy, and _everyone_ knew that Steve could probably do a thousand times better than him, but Steve seemed content where he was, so Tony sure as hell wasn’t going to contest with that.

 He got started with the ring design that same morning, curled up in the wicker chair at the front of the porch and watching Steve chop wood a few yards away, those glorious abs sticking to his thin wifebeater as he sweated from the exertion.

As the days passed, Tony only became more and more determined to give Steve the perfect proposal. He focused any pent-up energy and lingering anxieties on the challenge, charting up data and running through ring blueprint after ring blueprint until he’d gotten it down to three solid ideas. Steve probably thought he was working, and yeah, perhaps for half an hour or so every few days he was indeed checking up with Pepper to see if the launch had gone smoothly and such, but most of the time he was calling up restaurants and booking tables or texting Bruce and debating whether it would be feasible to get ahold of point-four grams of Vibranium from Wakanda, depending on how hard he batted his eyelashes at the king. He was pretty certain he wanted it to be Vibranium, after all- and if worst came to worst, he could always synthesize some more. He’d just have to get Steve away for a little while so he wouldn’t notice the workshop getting turned into a bombsite—

“Sweetheart?” He blinked and looked up from his tablet, turning to face Steve, who was smiling somewhat exasperatedly at him. “D’you get any of that, or were you off in your own world?”

Tony blinked. Steve had been talking, huh? “Uh. There was… tree? Something about a tree?” He tried, and when Steve laughed in response, Tony smiled back at him instinctively.

A hand came to settle in his hair as Steve moved forward, and Tony subtly switched the tablet off and placed it on his lap. “I was saying that you told me you’d never climbed a tree before, right?” Steve said. “Well, I think that today’s the day you should tick it off your bucketlist. There’s a lovely oak tree just at the perimeter of the field, and if you poke your head out of the top of canopy you can see the whole valley as the sun sets around it.”

Tony looked up at him. “Steve, have you just been out there climbing trees in your spare time today?”

“And what about it?” Steve eyed him with a grin, “climbing trees is fun.”

“You are an adult man.”

“Tony, yesterday you refused to get out of bed because I hadn’t given you a morning kiss. You had to call me and then demanded I come back upstairs.”

“That is not a childish action, that’s just basic relationship requirements!”

Steve rolled his eyes and laughed, taking Tony’s hands and hauling him up from the wicker chair with a quick peck to his lips. “Come on,” he said with a grin, “I’ll race you.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, ‘cause that’s gonna be an even match—” but Steve was already hopping down the stairs, pulling Tony along with him. “—God, you’re not thinking of going full-speed with me still attached to you, right, because you’re just gonna end up dragging your boyfriend along in the dirt. Or pulling my arm off.”

Luckily, Steve kept his run to vaguely human standards, and half a minute later they’d arrived at this tree Steve was so excited about. That was where they spent the rest of their evening, both of them facing off with one another, backs resting on opposing branches as they talked. The warm sunshine speckled Steve’s face as it shot through the leaves, and it caught on his irises in a way that made them almost glow. He was older now than when they’d first met, all the way back 7 years ago now, but he was still just as stunning. Steve aged- Thank God- and it showed on his face with little laugh lines and slightly weaker blond hairs than what he’d had at the beginning, not quite fading to gray, but perhaps a few years away from starting. Tony just felt honoured to know that he was going to be around to see that transition. He was going to get to grow old with Steve. If Steve said yes, that was.

But honestly, Tony, despite all his many issues, knew that Steve would. He couldn’t deny Steve’s love for him—not here, not now, when they were sat up in some uncomfortable fucking tree in Ohio where Steve had whisked him away in response to Tony’s earlier mental collapse.

Steve loved him, and Tony loved Steve, and he was going to put a ring on that Goddamn finger if it killed him.

They went to bed that night, and Tony pondered bringing it up to him. They’d never talked about marriage before, per se, but it had always just been somewhat unspoken. They talked as if they would stay with one another forever. Steve called Tony his ‘sure thing’ in that unbearable Brooklyn accent that he teased Tony with when he wanted to be overly sappy and dumb. It wasn’t a big stretch to make, right?

He ended getting distracted from the question in the end (Steve was very good at doing that to him, especially when his mouth was in places that managed to shut 90% of his brain functions off completely), and by the time he’d woken up the next morning, he decided that he was going to just keep it all as a surprise. He could work on the ideas on his own, perfect it all, and then when that had been achieved, he’d ask. And Steve would hopefully say yes, and Tony would probably start crying or something, and then Steve might start crying too, and oh, yeah, there was another thing that Tony could add to his ever-growing list of ‘Things that will make The Proposal perfect’: Tissues.

It was going to be good. Tony would make sure of it.

 

 

_

 

 

Like all good things, eventually their little soiree had to come to an end, and at the end of the week they were packing all their stuff up and heading back to the tower once more. Steve, because he was an asshole, made them get up at the asscrack of dawn in order to arrive back home in good time, and after some gentle attempts at getting Tony to move out of bed of his own accord, Steve eventually ended up hauling Tony from the mattress and then carrying him out to the Jeep, bedsheets and all.

“When I said ‘you can’t make me’ it was not an invitation for you to try,” Tony grumbled as he nestled his head into Steve’s neck and frowned.

“I didn’t just try, I succeeded,” Steve informed him cheerily. The sun was just starting to bathe the surrounding area in a watery light, and there was still the bite of nighttime in the air. The breeze pricked his cheeks and made his eyes water, so he shut them and was back to dozing off not even a few seconds later. They’d already packed the night before, so once Steve managed to wrangle him into the passenger seat, it wasn’t all too long until they had to set off again.

Tony looked out of the window with bleary, wistful eyes. “Do we have to go?” He said quietly. “I could buy us a place like this, if you want.  We could just… I dunno, be farmers.” His head turned and he smiled bashfully over at Steve. “What do you think?”

Steve’s hands flexed against the wheel and he rolled his eyes, absently tucking a corner of the duvet into Tony’s side. “I think,” he began, “that you would go stir-crazy if you spent any more than a week here, and I would too.”

Ugh. He hated when Steve was right. With a pout, Tony looked back out through the window, trying not to think about what awaited for him when he got home. He’d been keeping on top of the important stuff—Pepper had tracked down the person responsible for leaking the footage and was currently in the process of raining hell upon them, and the updates on figures for the product launch was all stored away in his head—but that still left the media to contest with, statements he was gonna have to make… it wouldn’t necessarily be _terrible_ , but he was still kind of dreading it anyway.

He felt something fall on his lap and start shuffling around, and he glanced down to see Steve’s hand searching through the covers. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to take your hand,” Steve answered, “but I’m having some difficulty locating it.”

Tony watched him fiddle around for a second or two before catching Tony’s fingers in his own. The look of triumph on Steve’s face was truly unnecessary, but Tony laughed anyway, the sound turning soft when Steve’s mouth touched against his knuckles.

“Next time it gets as bad as it did, please, _please_ take a break,” the other man said, voice low and vibrating along the skin of Tony’s fingers. “We don’t have to go to Ohio for a week. But just… let me know, okay? Maybe Pepper too, ask if you can take a breather. Promise me?”

Tony smiled at him, and quietly thanked the universe for letting him have a man like Steve Rogers for himself. “I promise,” he nodded, tilting his head and accepting the kiss that Steve placed on his mouth in response.

 They set off shortly after that, with Steve stopping off along the way to buy them the appropriate roadtrip snacks and then piling them all onto Tony’s lap for easy access. Tony napped for most of the morning ride, but eventually the sound of Steve’s continuous crunching of chips stirred him and he shucked the blankets he’d previously been nestled in. Steve shot him a wry glance. “You could’ve at least put on some pants.”

Tony looked down and then lifted his legs, hoisting them onto the dash. “Hey, at least I’ve got underwear on this time.” He was still in the pyjamas he’d been wearing that morning, having refused to leave bed when Steve asked him to, and so the little Iron Man helmets of his boxer-briefs smiled up at him. “That’s more than could be said for our trip to Italy last year.”

Steve sighed. Italy _had_ been rather disastrous. “You know, sometimes I get confused about why people tell me you’re a handful, and then I remember Italy and I think ‘oh yeah, _that’s_ why’.”

“You’ve got big hands,” Tony shrugged nonchalantly and looked back out of the open window, letting the hot breeze rush across his cheeks. “I’m sure you can handle it.”

He heard Steve’s responding chuckle and turned his head, watching the man roll his eyes and then slip his sunglasses back onto his face as they reached the top of the hill and got hit with the sun’s glare. Tony felt kind of like a broken record at that point, but God, he’d never get over how beautiful Steve looked when he was relaxed. Out of the uniform, wearing a faded red Henley and running a hand through messy bedhead that he hadn’t bothered to flatten out that morning. The glasses framed his face well, and from the passenger seat Tony admired the sharpness of Steve’s jaw. That thing could cut glass if given half a chance.

“Wha’ddya lookin’ at,” Steve asked, eyes still on the road as a small smile cracked his lips. Tony just leaned back in his seat, popping a chip into his mouth and raising his eyebrows.

 _I’m going to ask you to marry me, and you’re going to say yes and it’s going to be perfect._ “I’m looking at your nose. It’s still crooked from when you got punched by Thunderball. You think you’re gonna have an ugly nose forever now? Because I might have to break up with you if that’s the case.”

“That’s a little superficial of you.”

“Well, you know me. I’m all about appearances.”

Steve glanced down again at Tony’s bare legs and then plucked a broken-off bit of chip out of Tony’s hair. He wasn’t entirely sure how that had gotten there. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Ugh. Tony must be getting mellow in his old age, because he couldn’t even think of a decent response to that, too caught up in how much he fucking loved the big lug sat beside him. Ever since the idea had popped into his head nearly a week ago, all he’d been thinking about was how goddamn much Steve meant to him. How good they were together. They cancelled out the bad stuff about one another and enhance the good, and God, Tony wanted to be his husband so badly it hurt. Tony Stark-Rogers. Rogers-Stark? Nah, that sounded weird. But then, so did Steve Stark-Rogers. Maybe it could be Tony Stark-Rogers and Steve Rogers-Stark, that sounded better.

He hid a grin in his hand and then offered a chip up to Steve’s mouth, letting the man take it between his teeth and smile warmly at him in thanks. “I love you,” he declared, the words slipping easily from his mouth. Steve glanced at him, and then a second later his eyes narrowed.

“What are you plotting?”

“Huh?”

Steve waggled a finger in his direction. “That’s your plotting face.”

“I do not have my plotting face on darling, you’re being ridiculous.”

Steve flicked his eyes sideways again, pursing his lips. “Is it going to get us killed?” He asked.

Tony considered it. “I mean, I don’t _think_ so. Hypothetically speaking, obviously, since I’m not plotting anything.”

“What’s the percentage?”

Again, Tony considered it. “13%. Hypothetically.”

“Of survival or death?”

“Ugh, why so many questions?” Tony huffed and folded his arms, “my plan will not get us killed, Steve, I promise. And if it does, then it’s most certainly not through choice.”

“So you _are_ planning something.” Steve grinned smugly, because he may have been the paragon of virtue and icon of America when he was on the clock, but off-duty he was nothing more than an irritating asshole.

Tony sighed, and then fed him another chip to shut him up. “Just drive, Rogers.”

 

 

_____Steve_____

 

 

Things settled down, after that.

 

Tony came back better, more relaxed. Steve could admit, he did too. It had just been nice to escape it all for a little while, just be with each other, no distractions. Steve’d forgotten how it felt to be normal, and not deal with alien peace conferences or interdimensional space-hopping or whatever else had the potential to pop up in their ever-confusing lives. And Tony had seemed so happy there, so much more relaxed. Steve had had a hard time keeping his hands off him for longer than a few minutes at a time, if he was being honest. Call him cheesy, but there was just something so goddamn beautiful about seeing Tony smile.

He had to admit though, he’d missed home.

“HEADS UP!” Came a shout as soon as the elevator doors opened to let the two of them into the penthouse, and Steve blinked in surprise, watching a whole box of cereal fly across the kitchen and land in Thor’s lap. Thor gave Clint a thumbs up in thanks, and then dug his hand inside, taking a large handful of Honey-Nut Cheerios and pushing them all into his mouth. Natasha, who was curled up on the kitchen counter like a kitten and scrolling through her phone, caught sight of the two of them first. Her smile was warm.

“Guys, we gotta behave now, mom and dad are back.”

Steve waved when they all turned to look their way and pushed Tony forward as the man spluttered. “I am not… we’re… shut up,” he muttered half-heartedly, dropping his bags at the door. “Did you break anything while we were away? Set anything on fire? Cause a rift in spacetime, maybe?”

“Nope, don’t worry,” Bruce wandered into their line of sight, patting Steve on the back and slipping onto one of the stools, “we were all perfectly well behaved.”

Tony harrumphed and folded his arms. “Yeah, unlikely,” he muttered, sharing a look with Steve. Steve just smiled at him and shook his head fondly, eyeing up Thor as he tipped the entire box of cereal into his mouth, creating a mountain big enough that the God could hardly even get his lips around it. “Thor, why are you even eating cereal at 4 in the afternoon?”

“There’s no limit on when you can eat Cheerios,” Clint told him adamantly, hopping up onto the counter next to Natasha, “and we weren’t planning on eating anything for dinner tonight anyway. Takeout got boring after the 5th day and Thor ate all the pasta in the cupboards.”

Again, Steve and Tony shot one another a look. “Home sweet home,” Tony said through a sigh, and Steve slipped his arm around Tony’s waist, thumb running back and forth along the warm exposed skin of his waist.

“Go put on some pants while I make us all some food,” he whispered in the other man’s ear, “and then maybe in a few hours I’ll take ‘em off again.”

Tony looked down at his Iron Man boxers, then nodded. “I like that plan,” he agreed, before bounding off in the direction of their bedroom, “back in a minute!”

Tony disappeared up the stairs a few seconds later and Steve turned to the cupboards, analysing their contents critically. He could feel the gazes of his team-mates staring at him. “He’s okay,” Steve assured them all, knowing the question that was on the tips of all their tongues, “he’s doing better. It was just… a lot, I think. Been a stressful few weeks.”

He heard their murmurs behind him. “That’s good,” Thor said earnestly, “I’m glad to hear it. Did you have a good time away?”

“Yeah,” Steve smiled and pulled out a bag of rice from the top shelf, “it was wonderful, thank you. Were things alright over here while we were gone?”

“Things were just fine,” Clint said, “stopped a bank robbery on Monday, met up with Thor’s second cousin Friedal on Wednesday and then watched him fall off the roof on Thursday morning— Natasha had a nice chat with the chick that sold the tape of Tony to Justin Hammer, that was funny—”

“You what?” Steve turned to her rapidly, eyes widening, but she just shrugged and drew a figure of eight on the table, flicking her hair out of her face.

“That wasn’t a euphemism, I really did just have a chat with her,” she said calmly, “and I can assure you, she won’t ever be making decisions like that again. Not even for all the money in the world.”

Steve eyed her for a moment, but Natasha didn’t look anything other than satisfied. In all honesty, Steve was mostly just irritated that she’d gotten there first. There were a few things Steve wanted to say to her too. “She was given a sentance, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He pulled a pan out of the drawer and placed it on the stove with a clatter. He didn’t even feel remotely sorry for her. If all went to plan, her and Hammer would hopefully be getting jail-time for it. It wasn’t going to take any of it back, but hell, it would be satisfying to see them face the consequences. “Any other news?”

There were shrugs and shaking heads around the room, so Steve figured nothing overly important had happened while they’d been gone. Tony came back into the kitchen a minute or so later, and it didn’t take long for all of them to settle down into their normal routine again; with Tony and Clint bickering across the table and Natasha egging them both on, and Thor sat happily filling himself up on bread rolls before the meal even began. Bruce informed him that he had no reason to complain when he had no bread left to dip, and Thor merely grunted as he stuffed even more food into his mouth as usual.

It was messy. It was home. Steve smiled fondly around the room and wound his ankle around Tony’s absently as he tucked into his dinner enthusiastically, and felt Tony’s eyes fall on his profile a second later, the corner of a warm smile catching on Steve’s periphery. He turned, watching Tony’s mouth continue to move as he squabbled over something utterly mundane with Clint while his eyes fixed themselves to Steve over Clint’s head. They shared a smile, and Steve thought absently, _‘I can’t ever let this go’._

Not that he intended to, obviously. Tony had been his sure thing since… God, probably since before they’d even started to date. Maybe before they’d even started to be friends. Sometimes Steve looked over at the other man and felt as if they had always just been inevitable. Tony would laugh if Steve called it destiny, but it was the only way he could aptly describe the way their souls just seemed to fit with one another. It felt stronger than love. It felt like understanding what it was to be whole after living life as a fragment.

“Ugh,” Clint’s voice knocked him out of his little trance, and he blinked, looking over at the archer as the man pulled a face, _“this,_ I haven’t missed.”

“What?”

Clint pointed a finger between the two of them. “Your sickeningly obvious lovey-faces while everyone’s trying to eat. It’s off-putting as hell, man.”

Steve just rolled his eyes and smiled over at Tony again before looking down at his food. “You’ll understand one day, kid,” he said earnestly, patting Clint on the shoulder. Clint just harrumphed and shoved him off with a sullen pout, muttering something about ‘totally being able to score more dates than you Cap, shut your mouth’.

After dinner, Steve and Tony both ended up going to bed pretty early, just because the road trip over had managed to tire them out, and Steve was supposed to call in at SHIELD early the next morning anyway. They sank into the familiar mattress with a joint sigh, Steve’s hands automatically going to their usual position around the back of Tony’s waist and pulling him in in order to bury his nose into the other man’s soft curls. It was only a few seconds in which they were silent, however, before Tony was sat back up in bed again, his fingers clicking in a show of remembrance. Steve sighed. “Whatever it is, can’t it wait ‘till morning?”

But Tony didn’t respond, just hopped off the bed and then hunkered down, opening the suitcase that they hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. He shuffled around for a minute while Steve watched him with one cracked-open eye, until he eventually found what he was looking for and held it up triumphantly, looking at Steve with a big smile on his face. Steve sat up and watched Tony trek across the room, where he put his sobriety coin carefully back in its box on their dresser. Then, when he crawled back into a bed a few moments after, Steve made sure to squeeze him just a little bit tighter as his arms wrapped around the other man once more.

“Thank you,” was all Tony said, soft and earnest, nose brushing with Steve’s as he looked up, “you’re the best.”

Steve just nodded. “I am, aren’t I,” he said sagely, and then kissed Tony’s forehead as the other man huffed, “now sit still and go to sleep.”

“You’re lucky I’m tired, or I’d be doing the opposite just to piss you off right about now.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Go to sleep, Tony.”

Tony snuggled down further, eyes shutting as he stifled a yawn. “No.”

Thirty seconds later, and Tony was snoring lightly into Steve’s shoulder, just as Steve predicted. He grinned to himself, kissing the nearby forehead one last time before resting his hand over Tony’s reactor and following suit.

 

 

-

 

 

There were kisses being marked along the jut of his collar-bone when he awoke the next morning.

He stirred, breathing in softly and feeling Tony’s hand trace a line from neck to abdomen, fingers stroking across the bumps of his muscle. Tony was pressed close already, his bare leg tangled up in Steve’s own, and when Steve shifted to roll onto his back, he made sure to pull Tony along with him so that he lay spread across Steve’s chest. He pushed his sleepy eyes open and watched Tony grin down at him. “Morning,” he muttered with a sly grin, dropping down to kiss Steve’s neck again.

Certainly a nice way to wake up, Steve thought, breathing in sharply as Tony dug his teeth into the soft spot just under Steve’s jaw. He moved his hand, curled it into Tony’s hair and gripped, just the way he knew Tony liked it, and heard the pleased little grunt he got in response, the man’s thigh shifting so it pressed down between Steve’s.

One of those mornings, then. Fine by Steve.

However, just as he curled his arm around the back of Tony’s waist and prepared to go south, his work-phone vibrated somewhere over to his left, loud and cutting. Steve paused, frown forming on his face. “I should answer that.”

Tony whined and leaned up, catching Steve’s jaw between his fingers and littering kisses over his mouth. “No, no, I disagree. You should keep that hand right where it belongs, which is on my ass, thank you Captain Rogers—”

“Sorry,” Steve said apologetically as he reached for the phone, and Tony sighed, settling his chin sulkily on Steve’s chest and looking up at him with a pout. Unfortunately, seeing as his work phone only rang in emergencies and high-priority cases, Steve couldn’t let himself be swayed. Shame. He picked up the phone and moved it to his ear, pressing his finger to Tony’s lips to stop the man from doing something churlish, like make very loud sex noises. It would not be the first time. “Captain Rogers speaking.”

“We’ve got a situation,” Fury said immediately, the tone of his voice implying something serious, “Barnes checked in with us last night. Says he had an altercation with another of HYDRA’s assets while he was on a stakeout in Prague.”

Steve frowned. “But all—the assets were all killed by Zemo back in 2016, that doesn’t make sense—” he paused, face falling. “Unless they’ve started up the program again.”

“That’s what we think they’re trying to do. But Barnes got the location out of him, and apparently it’s Siberia again. Different mountain range though, so you won’t be familiar with it.” Fury took a break, his voice grave. “We need you in, Cap. Sort this shit out before it gets out of hand again. Right now, the program seems to still be in its infancy. We can stamp it out now and stop it for good this time.”

Steve glanced down at Tony, who was listening to the conversation with a strained face and a tight mouth. Steve felt cold. He hated talking about… well. The whole of 2016, really. It had all been a shit show.

But he had a job to do. He was going to have to just suck it up. “I’ll be right over,” he said firmly, and then ended the call without further ado, sitting up on his elbows. He gave Tony an apologetic look.

“Is this an Avengers mission?” Tony said, meaning _do you want me to come?_

Steve shook his head. “If it were high priority enough, he would’ve called all of us in. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Anyway, you have to attend the peace summit today, remember? That’s pretty important, sweetheart.”

“I can miss the summit.”

“Tony, I promise, it’ll be fine.” Steve leaned down, catching his mouth in a light kiss. “If I need backup, I’ll call for it. What with your above-atmosphere Quinjets and a suit that can reach Mach 5 in the time it takes for me to blink, I’m sure there won’t be a problem.”

He sat up and Tony rolled off him, letting him pad across the room to grab for his uniform. It was a hassle to head all the way over to Russia on a Tuesday, but it couldn’t be helped, and Steve hoped it wouldn’t take long. These sort of Sciencey divisions of HYDRA tended to be less well equipped in dealing with a supersoldier such as himself. The people they were testing on however… well, that might be a different story.

But he’d handle it. He always did.

He pulled on his uniform hurriedly and grabbed his kitbag, stopping by Tony as the man sat on the bed and watched. There was still a small frown on his face, and Steve ran his thumb over it in an attempt to smooth it out. “I’ll check in every two hours,” he said, like always, because both of them knew how hard it could be to go about your day knowing your partner’s life was on the line. “I love you. Try not to kill anyone at the summit today.”

Tony sighed, taking Steve’s hand from his face and then kissing his fingers before letting go. “No promises,” he muttered, before looking up at Steve. “Stay safe. I love you too.”

Steve glanced mournfully over to the bed, where he’d been peacefully about to receive a blowjob just minutes earlier. Sometimes being a superhero really sucked. Seemed they were always just getting fucking interrupted.

Catching the look, Tony managed to smile. “We’ll finish when you get back,” he promised, “now go, save the world or whatever.”

Steve gave him a small salute, stepping backward. “Piece of cake,” he promised confidently as he reached the door.

 

 

-

 

 

Famous last words.

 

**_____Tony_____**

“Boring, boring, compulsive liar, boring, gives terrible handjobs, underlying racist ideologies, boring, recycles her conversations every time she talks to someone,” Tony pointed a finger at each of the people in the room and then turned back to Natasha, giving her the saddest look he could muster. “The meeting is officially finished Nat, don’t make me stay any longer.”

They’d arrived in Geneva early the morning before, and had been in meetings and consultations ever since. What with the world still being in relative chaos after The Snap and then the subsequent Unsnapping, these sorts of peace summits were being held on a pretty much monthly basis these days. Entire governments had collapsed and new ones put in place, only to be pushed out again when the old ones returned. In the sea of faces here, about 30% of them were new. They were ones who’d stood up to the role and tried to keep their countries from collapse, and in all honesty, Tony thought they were doing better jobs than the old guys had. A lot of the people who’d stepped up were younger, fresher, more diverse. They’d done amazing things to keep their communities from falling apart. And now, what with all the old fuddy-duddy’s coming back and wanting their power returned to them, there were at least fifteen countries on the brink of civil war. Hence all these goddamned peace summits and UN meetings and God knows what else. And of course, it was all the fuddy-duddy ones who were currently in meeting today. Next week they were holding one for the newer powers, and then the week after that it would be a collective discussion.

Tony figured that was going to go about as well as he was currently picturing in his head. That being, a fire-and-brimstone sort of event.

Natasha looked at him, sharing his pain for a moment before she just sighed and then straightened her back as if she were heading to war. “The meeting is done, and now the liaising begins.” Her hand came to his back and she pushed him further into the room. “Come on Tony, work with me here. These guys might suck, but they also decide whether or not we’re branded as terrorists or superheroes, so schmoozing would probably be the best course of action here.”

Tony made a face and fiddled with his cufflinks. He wished he was back home, in bed. Preferably with a warm supersoldier at his side. Unfortunately though, being a superhero wasn’t all about fighting aliens and making things go boom. Sometimes it was about trying to stabilise international relations in order to prevent the second apocalypse after only just coming back from the first. “You’re dealing with the racist one,” he muttered irritably, looking at the wrinkly bastard in question, sat talking with the other wrinkly bastards in the back of the room.

“Well then you can take Mr Compulsive Liar.” She rolled her eyes and flicked her hair off her shoulders, holding back a sigh. “I’d say next time we make Clint and Bruce do this, but then we’d probably end up with a national incident on our hands, and I really don’t have time for that.”

Yeah, Tony could agree with that one. Him and Natasha were the best fit for this sort of thing, he knew that, but still- there were a hell of a lot of things he’d rather be doing. It wasn’t all bad though, he supposed—free coffee and donuts at the snack table, which was always a plus. Although not even they would be able to keep him in this place for much longer. He figured he could spare another hour before calling it a night. After that, he and Nat could just go to a restaurant, catch up, maybe see a bit of Geneva. Not a bad way to spend a day, really.

But _God_ , this man was dull. Tony smiled and nodded along with the lie about the rescuing of five orphans from a flood in Houston, trying to remember the name of the guy before it came up and he was left lacking. After another minute of pointless rambling, Tony moved on with a shake of hands and an assurance of another meeting at some point in the next few months. It was much the same with everyone else he spoke to, although there were some blessedly familiar faces that gave him and Nat at least a little reprieve. He spoke to T’challa for a good twenty minutes, glad of an excuse to catch up with the King, and then moved onto someone who seemed to be a big Captain America fan, which was great, seeing as it gave Tony the opportunity to just talk about Steve for ten minutes flat without interruption.

“Speaking of,” Tony said once he was done explaining proudly how Steve had taken out Doctor Doom with nothing more than a well-placed headbutt last week, “I’m due to check in with him ‘round about now, so I’ll have to excuse myself.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket with one hand and shook the man’s hand with the other, then wandered off to the side of the room next to the glass windows, leaning idly against them as he switched on his phone. Steve’s suit had had an in-built vitals monitor fitted into the centrepiece of his uniform, and as Steve had said, it gave Tony an update every two hours. If Steve wasn’t otherwise occupied, he’d send Tony a brief message as well, explaining the situation and how well it was being handled. They were good at this, by now. Reminding one another they were safe. The protocols they had in place to keep each other informed. After years of stress, it was just easier to let one another know everything that was going on. And seeing as Tony liked to check up on Steve’s heartbeat during the day anyway, this hardly even seemed unusual any more.

There wasn’t a message waiting for him when he opened his phone, but that wasn’t unduly concerning. It was rare either of them had the time to type out a message while on a high-stakes mission. Instead, Tony pulled up the encrypted link to Steve’s vitals report, intending to give that a quick glance through instead.

He opened it, and looked at the blank screen in confusion. Then he checked whether his GPS was on, which it was, of course. And even if it wasn’t, Steve’s vitals report would still get to him. He’d designed to be almost impossible to lose connection with, in order to avoid scares on Tony’s part. The only time it wouldn’t give him an update was if Steve wasn’t actually in the suit at all—even if he was dead, the vitals would show it.

He blinked once, twice, three times. Steve wasn’t back home yet, so he would still be wearing his suit. There was no way he’d not be wearing his suit unless it had been forcibly taken off him.

But there was no report. So Steve wasn’t wearing his suit.

So it had been forcibly taken off him.

Tony looked up, blinked a few times, and then looked back down again. But still, the empty screen stared back at him. “JARVIS?” He murmured, “is my phone malfunctioning?”

“Not as far as I am aware, sir. Captain Rogers’ vitals do appear to have failed to be registered.” JARVIS’ voice was slightly concerned, and of course, Tony had known that this wasn’t an error- his phone didn’t malfunction, for one thing. No, this was—this was something on Steve’s end.

His head shot up, trying to pick Natasha out of the crowds. It wasn’t entirely difficult, what with the fiery red of her hair, and he was hurrying over to her as soon as he’d gotten his sights set on the woman. There was something uncomfortable settling in his chest, but he pushed it away. There could be a variety of reasons for this. Maybe Steve had had to take off the uniform for whatever reason. Maybe it was perfectly explainable.

“Miss Romanov,” he slid up to her side smoothly and placed a hand around her arm, starting to tug her sideways, “I’m going to have to monopolize your attention for a moment—Avengers Business, you know the drill.” Shooting a knowing smile over to the group of people she had previously been talking to, he led her away to a quieter area and then turned her to face him. “We’ve got a situation.”

Her eyes hardened immediately, moving over him once before coming to the immediate conclusion. “Steve?” She asked, and Tony nodded, that feeling under his sternum flaring up again when she said his name.

“His vitals aren’t showing up on my phone. They—the only way they wouldn’t show up was if the suit was removed from him, and he never—he doesn’t ever take it off when he’s on a mission, unless it’s over, and in that case he would have sent me a message—”

“Could have just been damaged,” she countered, but Tony shook his head.

“If the signal shorted, the fault would have been catalogued and I would have known about it.” He bit his lip and looked at her seriously, the panic in his chest now unable to be held back properly. If Steve had gone down in the middle of a HYDRA base full of potentially enhanced soldiers… “I need to go after him,” he declared with a nod, pulling back. “I think he’s in trouble.”

“Tony—”

“This isn’t up for debate,” Tony told her sharply, but she just rolled her eyes and then fell into step next to him, shoulders brushing as they hurried out of the venue.

“I wasn’t going to argue,” she told him, “I was going to say I’m coming with you.”

“The flight from here to Steve’s location could take hours on the plane—”

She just smiled. “T’challa owes me a favour. I think he came in on his own personal jet, which I imagine is pretty speedy.”

Tony nodded, shoving open the doors and then exiting out into the open air. The cold breeze hit his face, and he bit his lip and pulled out his phone again. Just to double check.

But there was nothing. Steve was off the grid.

“There could be a reasonable explanation for this,” Tony said, pushing back the voice that kept saying _no heartbeat, no heartbeat, dead dead **dead dead dead**_ **,** “I could—what if I’m just overreacting?” He wasn’t stupid. He knew he had a strange obsession with listening and hearing Steve’s heartbeat, especially as of late. Yeah, maybe ten years ago he wouldn’t have thought twice about going in all guns blazing, but things were different now. He was less impulsive, a little more level-headed. He knew waltzing into Steve’s high-risk mission without forewarning had the potential to go disastrously if he misjudged.

“What is your gut saying?” Natasha asked him, zipping up her jacket and then pulling out a hair-tie in order to get her hair out of her face. “Cause mine’s telling me that your tech doesn’t malfunction, and Steve wouldn’t just forget to check in with you.”

Natasha was right. This wasn’t something Tony could afford to get wrong. He clenched his jaw and then gave the mental command, letting the Iron Man suit materialise around him in answer. She nodded. “Check in and keep me updated,” she commanded, knowing that even in T’challa’s jet, she’d be at least half an hour behind Tony. He put his arms down by his sides and made to launch, but she grabbed his arm before he could and looked at him seriously. “Be careful and stay alert, Tony. You know what HYDRA are like. Don’t let them get inside your head.”

The _Again_ was left unsaid, but Tony understood it anyway. This was dangerous territory that he and Steve were stepping on now. Old memories and all.

But they’d learned, they’d grown. Not again. Tony wasn’t going to be manipulated this time round.

“Race you there,” he said to her, and then flexed his palms and shot off into the Swiss sky without another word. In his mind, he saw the blank screen of his phone, the lack of a heartbeat that should have been there.

He forced himself not to panic. That wouldn’t do either of them any good. And if he was lucky—if the world was kind to him, just for once, then maybe there wasn’t anything to worry about at all. Maybe this really was just an innocent miscommunication.

But if it wasn’t…

He put all the power he could into the thrusters and arced high into the sky _. ‘I’m on my way, Steve.’_

 

 

_

 

 

The flight was only half an hour, but the wait was excruciatingly long. Every second felt stretched into a sperate hour of its own, with Tony spinning a dozen scenarios in his head throughout the whole journey, none of them good. He knew he had to keep his head on straight, knew that letting his emotions get the better of him was not something he could afford to do, but it was fucking hard. God, _anything_ could have happened to him.

No, no. It would be fine. Steve was a fighter. And Tony was almost certain he was still alive. If they’d killed him, they wouldn’t have bothered to take his suit from him first, and so the flatline would have shown up on Tony’s update. And it hadn’t, ergo, Steve must still be alive. Anything else—it was secondary. The point was, Steve wasn’t dead. Tony just had to focus on that.

“Sir,” JARVIS spoke up, voice soft, “you have not taken a breath in over twenty seconds now.”

Oh. Tony blinked and then sucked one in, feeling it burn almost like alcohol in his throat--- but that was not a train of thought he wanted to go down just then, so he shoved it away. “Thanks for the reminder J,” he said breezily. The temperature was dropping as he moved further North, and he watched the icy planes of the Russian tundra loom up ahead of him. Steve hated the cold. Always had.

God, Tony should have gone with him. He’d _known_ it was going to be dangerous, and he’d let Steve go on his own anyway. “How far out, J?”

“Five minutes.”

“Cut that down. Turn off the heating systems and divert power to thrusters.”

“Sir, the temperature is below freezing—”

“I’ll survive, Jarvis, just do it.” Tony’s voice was sharp and held no room for argument, and a second later Tony felt the extra burst of speed as JARVIS followed the command. He sped over mountain-ranges pushing Mach 4, feeling the way his head began to throb a little. He wasn’t supposed to sustain this sort of speed for more than a minute or so, and no doubt his body would pay for it tomorrow. But that didn’t matter right now.

“Reaching destination, preparing landing,” JARVIS informed him, and Tony felt the suit slow, arc downward into the centre of a threatening-looking mountain range. This was a good fifty miles away from the last HYDRA base Tony had visited in Siberia—did these guys just enjoy setting up camp in this fucking hellscape? It was ridiculous. Tony needed to set up some sort of surveillance over this area if it was so fucking popular with terrorists.

His HUD picked up the compound a second later, half covered with permafrost and tucked away at the bottom of the biggest mountain. Steve was somewhere in there. Or at least, Tony was praying he was somewhere in there. He was just running on the hope that whatever they’d done with him, they’d done it here and not transferred him somewhere else. In this wasteland, trying to hunt him down would be damn near impossible.

He landed smoothly right outside the door, slowing his descent to the point where he didn’t even make a noise as he touched down. The door was passcode encrypted, but Tony was Tony, and it didn’t stay that way for long. “Can we get a signal here, J?”

“The outer walls are lead-lined and it’s interfering with my sensors. Once you get further in, I might be able to pick something up.”

Tony nodded and strode forward, taking in all the décor with a lip curled in distaste. Seemed HYDRA were still digging the ‘1970’s Soviet Russia’ look, which was ultimately unsurprising. They probably looked wistfully back on those times. He unlocked another door and slipped through, checking the corridor for threats. But there were none. It was silent—eerily so.

If they’d been good enough to take Steve Rogers out of action, then it begged the question as to where the hell they’d all disappeared to now. “Better?” He asked JARVIS expectantly.

“Scanning now,” the AI responded, before a second later, “one life-form detected in sub-level 5.”

Tony blinked. _“One?”_ That couldn’t be right, there had to be more. It had been an active HYDRA site when Steve had headed in. Where the Goddamn hell had the rest of them gone? “Do their vitals match up to Steve’s?”

Another second, and then— “It appears they are similar, yes, although everything is spiking erratically. Baseline humans would not be able to deal with this level of physical stress without going into cardiac arrest, so if it is not Captain Rogers, then it is most likely one of the enhanced soldiers he was trying to contain.”

With the increasing feeling he was walking into a trap, Tony nodded and then headed downward, arms raised in repulsor-firing position in case of… well, he wasn’t sure. Apparently there was only one thing alive in this place, and he hoped to God it was Steve. He kicked down the door to the stairwell, noting complete darkness envelop him as he did so. The lights must have shorted in the lower levels. JARVIS didn’t even need to be asked before switching on the flashlights fitted into the suit, and Tony blinked as the lighting changed. Then, once his eyes had had the chance to adjust, he saw what lay ahead of him and felt his mouth drop open in horror, letting out a violent curse.

Bodies littered the stairwell like limp puppets, blood smattering their uniforms, bones sticking horrifically out of place. There were at least seven men strewn over the steps, and they were all HYDRA agents, going by their badges. Tony gagged at the massacre in front of him and looked away from all the blood, glad of the suit’s filtration system that was blocking out the smell. There were no bullets, no scorch marks. This appeared to have all been done by hand.

There was only one person capable of all that.

“Sir, I think perhaps it may be best to wait for backup before dealing with this,” JARVIS told him quietly, clearly coming to the same conclusions as him, “we do not know what we are facing here, but it does not look to be something that Captain Rogers would be doing when in his right mind.”

That was true. Steve… Steve was lethal, he _could_ do all this, without question, but it simply was not his style. He wasn’t so—so _brutal_. He was efficient, he tended to incapacitate as opposed to kill, and when he did he made it fast and clean. Not _this_.

Oh God. What the fuck had they done to him?

Tony steeled himself and then stepped over the first body, making his way down the stairwell. “I can’t wait,” he gritted, “Steve needs me. I’m not going to just sit around.”

“Sir, if the Captain really has done this much damage, then there is a chance that something has happened which prevents him from even knowing the difference between you and HYDRA—”

“Yes, well then I’ll remind him, won’t I,” Tony snapped, turning the corner in the stairwell and then swallowing when another mound of bodies came into view. He paused for a moment, and then bit his lip. “But to be safe… Primary user override: Anthony Edward Stark. Disable all external command features. Disable User Captain Steve Rogers. Disable all external access codes. Complete Lockdown mode, J.”

There was the faintest sound of hissing as all the catches and releases in Tony’s suit locked up, and JARVIS quickly processed the orders Tony had given him. There. He was now essentially locked into this Tin-Can until he got back to base and could disable it manually. Or it was forcibly ripped off him.

Either way, Steve wasn’t getting in unless he really put some effort into it. And Tony wasn’t getting out, either. He ignored the claustrophobia of that thought, and instead just stepped over another body, seeing the mark for SUBLEVEL4 loom up above him. “Is the biosignature moving around?” Tony asked quietly, hearing his boots clang unnaturally loudly in the deathly-silent stairwell.

“It doesn’t seem so,” JARVIS told him, “vitals suggest consciousness, but he’s staying still. Perhaps he is detained.”

“What, you think he massacred all these guys and then just went and popped himself back into his restraints?” Tony asked, realising that in his head, he was already sure that this was Steve. Which it might not be. It could be one of those enhanced assets that HYDRA had begun remaking. It could have been a science project gone rogue. Steve wasn’t necessarily even here. Hell, maybe this violence hadn’t even been caused by whatever it was that was still alive in sublevel 5. Maybe that poor guy was the only one who’d made it out with a heartbeat.

But something in his gut was telling him that that was probably not the case. He’d stepped over at least twenty bodies and counting, and like he’d said, no bullets, no signs of any obvious weaponry. Tony doubted whatever HYDRA could concoct would match up to this level of raw strength.

He reached Sublevel 5 a few seconds later and opened up the heavy door as quietly as possible. When he stepped into the long metal corridor, more corpses came into view, and Tony took a minute to process the level of damage that had been done here. He often forgot just how much harm Steve was really capable of- how the soldier could see bullets as they flew past and decapitate people with a single punch. But here, in front of him, it was made startlingly clear.

Steve—if this was Steve, of course—had just killed what looked to be nearly fifty men. Without a single weapon.

Tony swallowed. “Which door am I looking for?”

“Three doors down on your left. And Sir-” JARVIS’ voice was serious and low, “if this _is_ Captain Rogers, bear in mind that it is likely he already knows you are here.”

Yeah- enhanced senses and all. Tony nodded in acknowledgement, and pushed any fear right down in the place where it usually went. Steve was going to be fine. They were going to get him out and work through whatever it was that had happened here. It would all be okay.

He put a hand to the door when he reached it and took a small breath. “Steve?” He called out tentatively, “Steve, sweetheart, it’s me. Tony. Iron Man. I’m coming in now, okay?”

No response. Tony put the other hand up in repulsor-firing position then he pushed at the door, opening it up with a too-loud groaning sound. This room was lighter, mainly because it was huge enough that the roof had windows which let in the light from outside. It was also vast, spacious, like an auditorium, and filled with… medical equipment, it looked like. In the centre, Tony realised, was the same machine that they’d used on Bucky Barnes for all those years. Or at least, it had been. It looked kind of mangled now.

Something dropped out of Tony’s stomach as his mind put together the pieces. “Steve?” He called out again, feeling a tremor in his voice. They _couldn’t_ have. They didn’t have the tech to do it so fast. Unless they’d developed a better method. Potentially the method they’d used to train up the newest batch of assets.

Or maybe there had never been any assets at all. Maybe this had always been their plan: lure Steve in, then… then make him one of them.

Well. Whatever they’d tried, it had clearly backfired, seeing as every last person except the one in the room with Tony was dead.

He stepped further in, turning on thermal vision in his HUD in order to pinpoint the location of the survivor. It wasn’t hard; tucked away in a corner, curled into fetal position, was a hot ball of orange-coloured life. Tony looked at the curve of his shoulders, the tufts on his hair, the outline of his trousers.

Yeah. That was Steve. He’d know that body anywhere, thermal imagining or no.

There were more bodies in this room than anywhere, mainly because Tony figured these guys hadn’t been able to flee the compound, and had instead been trapped right in the eye of the storm. Looked like they’d been scientists, mainly. Few soldier uniforms. Tony felt no sorrow for them. He stepped over their corpses and headed over to the corner where Steve was tucked away. “Sweetheart?” He tried again, “Steve, it’s me. Tony Stark. I’m the cool red and gold robot that’s coming toward you now.”

There was no response, but Tony heard the smallest hitch of breath, rapid and shaky. Tony made his way around the machine until he got Steve in his sights, then held back the gasp that threatened to spill from his lips.

Steve was bare-chested, but the pants of his uniform were still on. Dark red pretty much covered him; blood dripped off his hands, soaked through his hair, splattered over his back. Steve showed no signs of physical injury, so Tony assumed that it wasn’t his own.

Fuck. 48 hours ago, they’d been in bed together, happy, relaxed, content. Tony really fucking hated their jobs, sometimes.

When Tony came into view, he watched Steve go still, and the tension racketed up a notch or two. “Steve,” Tony said in a low voice, hands going up slowly, “do you know who I am?”

_Please know who I am. Please, please know who I am._

There was no reaction for a moment, but then slowly, smoothly, Steve lifted his head and looked Tony right in the eyes. His face was blank for a moment, until something creased in his forehead and he opened his mouth. “T… Tony,” he answered, voice like sandpaper.

Tony resisted the urge to shut his eyes and thank whichever deity it was looking over him just then. “Yeah,” he took another tentative step forward, “yeah, sweetheart, it’s me—”

He didn’t finish whatever it was that he’d been going to say because Steve had jumped to his feet, posture coiled, tense, knees bent. His hands curled and lifted away from his sides, just a fraction. Tony stopped moving.

They stared at one another for a moment.

“I can’t stop it,” Steve gritted, face ashen, eyes wide and horrified as he shivered, “Tony, I can’t—I don’t… they’ve done something, I can’t…” he took a stride forward and then stopped jerkily, teeth grinding. “Run,” he hissed, “get out… now. Go.”

“No.”

Steve snarled loudly, furiously, eyes flashing as he lifted a hand and then curled it painfully tight around his hair, looking down at the floor. Tony took another step forward. “You’re going to be okay Steve—”

The man lunged, managing to close the distance between them in an inhuman amount of time. Tony wheezed as Steve tackled him, sending both of them crashing to the freezing concrete floor. The recognition was gone from Steve’s face now, whatever lucidity he’d had when he first saw Tony disappearing into the ruthless rage that had been present when he’d been killing all those HYDRA agents.

Tony steeled himself as he grabbed Steve’s hand and stopped it from plunging straight into his face. This was not going to be pleasant. In fact, he was getting a rather uncomfortable sense of déjà vu from this shit, which wasn’t fun. But this time, Tony wasn’t reacting on an emotional level. And he had to admit, that changed the game a little.

“JARVIS,” he called, shoving Steve off him and then blasting a safe distance away, watching Steve pursue him like a predator would its pray. Tony mentally calculated the height of the roof, wondering whether Steve could jump up and grab him if he just flew to the top. Possibly. “What can we incapacitate him with?”

Steve lunged at him again, and Tony barely managed to dodge away from the suit-denting right hook sent his way. “We have a set of Adamantium cuffs, although they may be difficult to place on him while he’s still conscious. All other stun grenades and gas would probably be ineffective on him.” Tony flew backward again, not wanting to risk taking a hit from Steve at this range, but the soldier was fast, and it was hard to get a good amount of distance between them. When Steve launched himself forward and spun a kick in Tony’s direction again, it caught, and Tony felt the impact reverberate through his body, the suit managing to absorb most of the blow, but still leaving a little for Tony’s midsection. He gasped in pain and stumbled, back hitting the wall. That was going to bruise. “Sir,” JARVIS said hurriedly as Steve moved forward once more, “I think perhaps we may have to use more traditional methods for this.”

Yeah, Tony was on the same page. He clenched his jaw and then fired a warning blast at the approaching threat; not enough to hurt, but enough to make him spend a few seconds recovering. Tony shot Steve a sympathetic glance, but the man just returned it with a snarl and then leaped forward once more, fearless, devastating. Tony had to act fast—any longer, and Steve could get in a hit that might actually end up affecting him. That was the last thing either of them needed. “Baby, I’m sorry about this. You’ll be fine, I just— _hey_ , no kicking—I just need to get you to keep still for a moment, alright?” He ducked under another swinging punch and then blocked the oncoming knee that came up to meet him, before shoving Steve away and blasting ten feet into the air. Steve went stumbling back a few steps, eyes going back to Tony. But before he could recalibrate, Tony was descending on him rapidly, arms outstretched, repulsors firing.

Steve was strong—strong enough to take out a whole HYDRA compound on his own—but not even a supersoldier could withstand a heavy blow from an Iron Man suit flying head-on at 60 miles an hour. Tony’s hands collided with Steve, sending both of them skidding along the floor and crashing into a table or two if the clanging was anything to go by, and while they were moving, Tony swiftly and efficiently brought his fist across Steve’s temple, using just the right amount of pressure as he impacted.

Steve’s lifted a hand to try and block, but he was just a second too slow and his head snapped sideways with a jerk as Tony’s knuckles rapped across it, eyes going wide as if somewhat surprised. A moment later, finally giving up the fight, they rolled backward and Steve went limp under Tony’s grip with a small exhale of air.

Above him, Tony waited a second to make sure Steve was definitely out before sitting back a little. “Kind of anticlimactic,” he said, taking in a small breath of air and loosening his grip on Steve’s shoulders. “He definitely out?”

“Vitals suggest so, Sir,” JARVIS responded.

Tony nodded in relief, looking down at Steve’s bloodied face, smushed up against the cold concrete. His metal fingers stroked along the man’s cheekbone, and Tony felt the relief finally allow itself to surge through him. He knew, if this had been any other situation—had Steve been fully coherent, or maybe if they’d had him for longer, this fight wouldn’t have been quite as easy. Tony was lucky. They both were, for that matter.

Steve was okay. He was… he’d be fine. This—whatever it was—was all reversible. If they’d managed to pull Bucky out of it after seventy years of conditioning, then Tony was sure less than 48 hours would be a piece of cake.

God, he was so fucking glad it hadn’t been something worse. This… okay, so this wasn’t exactly _great_ , but at least this was going to be fixable. At least HYDRA hadn’t—they hadn’t done something irreversible. They hadn’t taken him from Tony completely.

He shut his eyes and stroked Steve’s hair off his face, before apologizing quietly and turning him over in order to attach the handcuffs to his back. It probably wasn’t comfortable, but Steve was unconscious. Tony was sure he would understand when he came back to himself. Although, he might not even remember any of this. When Bucky had first gotten out, he’d said he couldn’t remember large swathes of his life. Maybe it would be the same for Steve, which was probably for the best, considering the rather brutal way in which Steve had responded to HYDRA’s experimentation.

From what Tony could work out, they must have been waiting for Steve to turn up at the compound and then ambushed him upon arrival, taking him hostage as opposed to killing him in an attempt to create The Winter Soldier 2.0. They must have removed his suit then, in order to… to begin their tests. But obviously, they’d underestimated Steve’s stubbornness and strength, because he must have broken out and—well.

Tony could admit, he was glad Steve had killed them all. Saved him a job, after all.

He breathed out another sigh of relief and then turned Steve onto his back once more, lifting him gently up into his arms. He couldn’t fly him out like this, he’d freeze to death, but Natasha was supposed to be arriving soon, and he could meet her at the front entrance. He looked down at Steve, wishing he could lift the faceplate up and kiss him. Unfortunately he was locked into the suit and would be until they got back home, so contented himself with pressing his forehead into Steve’s for a second. “I’ve got you,” he said softly to the unconscious man, “you’re alright. You’re safe now.” Then he added, “Sorry for the headache you’re gonna wake up with tomorrow. Kinda pushed me into a corner with that one, big guy.”

Steve, of course, said nothing. Tony straightened back up after another second, and then looked up at the ceiling. He didn’t really fancy going through that bloody stairwell again. If they were gonna get out of there, they might as well do it fast. “JARVIS, there are no Avengers that have arrived in the building yet, are there?”

“No, sir.”

“Right. Then let’s blow this popsicle stand. Quite literally.”

 

 

**_____Steve_____**

 

 

_It was cold._

_Metal. Copper-tasting on the back of his tongue. Hard floors. Bleak colours. He breathed in and smelt death. Looked around and saw ruins. He was… Russia. The mission. He remembered that much, but what…where was…_

_He’d killed everyone. That, he knew with an unwavering certainty. He could feel it on his hands, dripping down his face. Steve had ripped their lives from underneath their skin._

_It was cold. Siberia._

_Siberia… he hated that place. He couldn’t remember..._

_“Steve,” someone called out, and it shattered through the haze a little, put his feet back on the Earth, “Steve, sweetheart, it’s me. Tony. Iron Man.”_

_Blood, metal, crack, slam, his shield had rammed itself straight through—_

_Fuck, no. Not again. No, Steve couldn’t hurt him again. Come on. He warned the approaching form, he warned Tony, stay back, stay away, Steve was going to hurt him. Crack, slam, he could hear it, the tearing of metal as Vibranium ripped through his suit, his skin, blood, no—_

_He couldn’t stop it. He lunged._

_They’d done something to him, in that chair. Changed him. He could feel it, there was violence, anger, pain. He just wanted to… scream. To let out all the destruction that bubbled under his hands. Tear, rip, punch, snarl. They’d tried to subdue him. It had almost worked. But not quite. Steve didn’t know how, or why, or anything, but he knew they hadn’t managed. He’d killed them. He wanted to kill all of them._

_A kick, a grunt of pain. This had happened before. Same place, same person._

_This time, he wasn’t going home until someone was dead. And it wasn’t going to be him._

“-ve, Steve? Can you hear me?”

_Crack, break, gasp, Tony begged underneath him, eyes wide, crimson spilling from his mouth, soul falling out of the cracks Steve had put in his chest,_

 

“Clint, it was just a blip. He’s still under.”

“No he’s not, look, his eyes are definitely— oh, hey, look, see! I was right!” Steve pushed his eyes open slowly, looked at Clint. The man waved at him. “Hey, buddy.”

Steve stared at him blankly. A million memories, images, pictures, burst through his mind. The most poignant one was the blood—that felt like it had permeated through everything. He felt the warmth of it on his hands, felt the stickiness of it against his skin.

There was something curling in his gut, tighter every second, sinking low and taking all his insides with it.

Siberia. Tony. Blood.

And his hands were tied down. He could feel it, now he was coming round and becoming more aware. His hands were tied down and he was in hospital and he could remember—he’d killed them, all of them, and then he’d turned on…

No. No no no, not—he couldn’t have.

He looked sideways at Clint, tried to choke out a word, but it wouldn’t make its way out of the safety of his throat. He couldn’t breathe, his chest _burned_ , because the last thing he remembered was telling Tony to stay away, then lunging… lunging with the intent to kill.

Oh, God. Please. Please, no. Anything but that.

Above him, Clint’s face was changing from relaxed to alert as he took in Steve’s expression. His hands lifted, he said something, but Steve couldn’t hear him. “Tell me I didn’t,” he whispered, unable to say the name, but seeing in his mind’s eye the suit that Steve had wrapped his hands around, the red & gold he’d aimed for.

It was like every nightmare he’d ever had, rolled into one sickening reality. He knew that it had been a trap; the whole mission had been a set-up, designed to get him over to where they could take him captive and… and ‘rewire’ him, as they’d called it. He knew that he’d had moments, flashes, afterwards, where he’d been coherent. Where he’d been aware. He’d seen the piles of bodies at his feet, remembered the sound of a neck breaking under his hands.

He couldn’t remember _whose_.

“Steve,” someone—Bruce, Bruce, that was who—said calmly, firmly, “breathe. Take in your surroundings. Do you know where you are?”

“Tell me I didn’t,” he said again, louder, hearing the twist and wrench in his voice as he shook his head repetitively with disbelief and horror, “tell me, Bruce, please…. Please, tell me—”

“You’re in hospital in New York,” Bruce pushed along, obviously sensing Steve wasn’t going to answer him, “you were temporarily taken hostage by HYDRA, during which they attempted to do some sort of mind-alteration that was similar to that of Bucky’s. It reacted badly with you, though, and you broke free, dealt with your kidnappers—”

“TELL ME I DIDN’T!”

“Didn’t _what?”_ Bruce asked, looking at him with deep concern, and Steve opened his mouth, but he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t even force the words out into the open, too terrified of the answer they would bring.

But he was chained, and he’d been brainwashed, and Tony wasn’t there in the room with him. _He should have been in the room with him._

“Did I kill him,” he choked out, tasting the bile on his tongue and sensing the revulsion that quickly consumed him, “did I—Tony. Did I kill Tony?”

The words were nothing but a whisper in the room, and Bruce’s face fell like a stack of bricks. He looked up at Clint rapidly. “Call him, now,” he commanded, and with a wordless nod Clint scarpered from the room, the door swinging shut behind him. Steve’s whole world felt like it was spinning off its axis; he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, this couldn’t be happening-

“Steve, look at me,” Bruce’s hand rested on his shoulder, firm and grounding, and Steve’s eyes darted to him, “Tony is fine. He’s alive. He brought you in. You _did not_ kill him. He’s in the cafeteria grabbing some food, but he’s gonna be with you as soon as he can.” The hand squeezed, and Bruce’s face came closer. “Steve, do you hear me? Tell me you understand me.”

That… no. Steve remembered… the scrape of metal, the crack, blood, screaming, no, no, he had, Steve knew it, Tony was dead and it was his fault—

“I promise you, Steve, _look at me.”_ Steve did, slowly, warily, and Bruce’s eyes were firm. “He is alive. You did not hurt him. He knocked you out and then we arrived, and we got you home, and you’ve been here for a few days. We’ve been running some tests to make sure nothing that happened has a risk of permanence. It doesn’t. There wasn’t enough time for it to even attempt to take hold of you fully. The restraints were purely to be extra safe. Do you follow me?”

“Where is he,” Steve whispered, his voice wet as he looked at Bruce. Everything was so fuzzy in his head, and he was so Goddamn confused. They’d messed with his brain. They’d made him attack Tony. Now Bruce was here saying he was okay, but _Tony wasn’t there_ and last time… last time they’d been battling it out in Siberia, Steve had been coherent enough to only fight to incapacitate, and yet he’d _still_ managed to seriously injure Tony, so what the hell must he have done this time, now that he hadn’t been holding back at all—

“Steve? Steve, hey, sweetpea. Hey. Look at me.”

His head jerked up, only then realising he’d curled it into his hands in the first place, and he took Tony in as the man leaned over him on the bed. He was panting a little, dishevelled and tired, and he was clutching two pots of jello in one hand while the other settled itself on Steve’s shoulder. It looked as if he’d run straight from the canteen, just like Bruce had said.

He was… alive. Unhurt.

“Afternoon, babycakes,” Tony smiled down at him softly and then lifted his hand to stroke the hair from Steve’s face, “you okay? I’m sorry I left. Thought you might be peckish when you woke up, hence,” he waved the jello cups in the air before throwing them carelessly on the bed and then using the now-free hand to gently knead Steve’s clenched fists open. “You’re gonna hurt yourself, Steve. Just relax. I’m here. I’m okay.”

Bruce, after a silent conversation with Tony, nodded and then walked quietly out of the room with a small smile in Steve’s direction, leaving the two of them alone in the hospital room. Steve was still staring at Tony, somewhat unwilling to believe anything that was happening. His head hurt, and he felt tired. Exhausted, even, despite the fact Bruce had said he’d been out for days. Nothing was making sense. “I… I hurt you,” he muttered, looking up at Tony somewhat disbelievingly, “I remember, I—I thought I’d—”

“You didn’t,” Tony was quick to correct him, squeezing Steve’s hand reassuringly and shaking his head, “Steve, I’m fine. Look at me. Not a scratch, I swear. Okay, well, maybe a _little_ one on my side—you have a hefty kick, I’ll give you that—but apart from some bruises, my statement still stands. I’ve done worse to myself in the lab on my own.”

Steve managed to give him a slightly raised eyebrow. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

Tony chuckled softly, his fingers moving to stroke Steve’s cheek while Steve simply took him in, allowed himself to reflect and recalibrate. HYDRA had done a number on him, that much he could tell. Everything from the last few days felt hazy and wrong, distorted. But he hadn’t killed Tony. He hadn’t. At least Steve didn’t have to worry about that now.

But that didn’t make everything else just go away.

“Steve?” Tony asked, his voice gentle, but tinted with concern as he took in the tight lines of Steve’s face, “what are you thinking in that head of yours, huh?”

He didn’t even know how to say it. How to put it into words, how it had all felt, going back there. It felt like he and Tony were just living in a never-ending cycle, always finishing in a Siberian tundra, fighting one another. Steve just couldn’t stop fucking hurting him, not matter how hard he tried.

God. He’d _promised_ he wouldn’t, not again. Not ever again. And yet he’d looked Tony in the eyes in that god forsaken HYDRA cell and he’d broken that promise. Whether he’d succeeded in what he’d been aiming for at the time (something he didn’t even want to fucking think about) was irrelevant—the fact was that Tony put his life in Steve’s hands every time they fucking touched and Steve had let him down. Again. Why Tony was still here at all, after everything, was beyond Steve. He sure as hell didn’t deserve it.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Are you—hey, talk to me Steve, what—”

“How can you even _look_ at me?” Steve uttered, eyes averting to the other side of the room as he wiped hastily over his face. He was exhausted. So, so exhausted, and so many people had died and it was his fault, he’d let himself get used by HYDRA and they’d taken over him _so_ easily, in the space of nothing more than a few days. It was fucking pathetic. “How can you… after everything I’ve done to you? All I seem to do is—is hurt you, and I don’t… it was Siberia all over again, it was a replay of the same fight that still haunts your fucking nightmares years onward, and it was all my fucking fault.” Steve clenched his eyes shut and shook his head. “I’m just sorry. You deserve so much better than all the shit I’ve put you through.”

There was a pause in the room, long and heavy. Steve couldn’t look at the other man. Too scared. Too cowardly.

But Tony’s hand snuck around his jaw, pressed into his face, directed his line of sight back to Tony. His face was serious, and his eyes looked down at Steve desperately. “That part of our life is over,” he declared with vigour, the words hissing around his teeth, “it is _done_. It sucked for everyone and I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you that it wasn’t all your fault, but I’ll keep saying it until you believe me. Steve, _look at me.”_ He moved his other hand, curling at around the side of Steve’s face and leaning in until they were almost nose to nose. “I love you. What happened in 2016 is something we’ve already worked through. You don’t need to bring that back. This is here and now, with a different set of circumstances that were totally out of your control. I’m never going to hold that against you.”

“You shouldn’t put so much faith in me, not when I— _Jesus_ , Tony, I nearly killed you—”

“No. You didn’t. You think you did, because HYDRA’s messed with your perception of what’s real and what’s not. It’s mixing you up, giving you false memories. You’re still coming off whatever it was they pumped you with.”

 _“That’s not the point!”_ Steve said desperately, looking up into Tony’s soft brown eyes and hating himself so fucking much, “the point is that I could kill you, so easily! I could kill _everyone_ so fucking easily, and all it takes, clearly, is a little bit of mind-whammying and I’m gone! You shouldn’t… I just don’t understand how you could trust me. I’m a killing machine, Tony. Look what I did to all those soldiers in the facility. What I almost did to you.” His voice ran dry and cracked down the middle, and he held Tony’s gaze as the man just looked down at him, eyes intense, filled with so much that Steve hardly even knew where to begin trying to unravel it all.

Then Tony moved. Jerked forward and hoisted his knee up, clambering onto the bed clumsily. His hands dropped to help lift himself up, but once he was settled, he reached down straight for Steve’s hand, pulling it up and squeezing it between his fingers. “Wanna know how I trust you?” He asked. “Marry me.”

Steve blinked at him, the words throwing him off for a second. “What?”

“Marry me,” Tony repeated, shuffling on his butt and taking in a breath, “because you’re the only person in the entire world that I feel like I can bare every single part of myself to. Marry me because we have been through hell together, and we’ve somehow managed to come out the other side together, stronger than ever. Marry me because _I love you_ , and I would pull the stars out of the fucking sky just to make you happy, and I know that you’d do exactly the same for me.”

Steve still didn’t understand. Tony couldn’t…. he wasn’t serious, surely. Not after everything. Not after this. How could he be? But Tony, apparently sensing his lack of comprehension, just swallowed and then held Steve’s hand even tighter, looking somewhat nervous now. “I’ve been planning it for weeks,” he said quickly, “trying to get everything perfect, trying to do it right. I know this is—it’s out of the blue, definitely not what I had in mind, but Steve… God, Steve, I love you so much. Of _course_ I trust you. I trust you enough to want to spend my life with you, is that not evidence enough?”

When Steve said nothing in response, Tony sighed, shutting his eyes and pulling Steve’s hand up further to press warm lips against his knuckles. “I don’t think you’re a killing machine,” he continued, the vibrations in his voice running along the skin of Steve’s hand, “I never have. I think you’re an artist. You create far more than you could ever destroy. You make me actually believe the world might be a better place than I think it is, Steve—and listen, I know this is… in hindsight, I see how blurting out my proposal in a hospital room after you’ve just been put through hell was probably not, uh, the wisest timing I could have picked, but… but I mean it. I just want you to know that. You don’t have to answer right now. Or at all. But that’s what I think. And that won’t ever change.” Tony nodded, then, and clamped his mouth shut, apparently finished. His eyes darted nervously up at Steve’s face, before they moved back down to his lap.

Steve simply gawped at him. He wasn’t sure what else to do. Tony… Tony had really meant that. Steve knew when Tony was just blabbering for the sake of filling a room with noise and when he was telling the full, earnest truth. It was always in his eyes. The sincerity. The raw soul of him. And that was here, now, as Tony kept his hands curled firmly around Steve’s and he nibbled at his lip.

He really wanted that.

“I…” Steve began, voice hoarse, unsteady. “Tony—”

“I’m sorry,” Tony cut in hurriedly, a new train of thought apparently jumping into his mind, “sorry, god, I just realised how stupid it was to say that here, now. You’re all— all mentally fucked up by HYDRA. You don’t have to answer, Steve, I’m sorry. Just—”

“Of course I want to marry you,” he finished up what he’d been going to say before Tony could lose himself in his quickly spiralling thoughts, and watched Tony go completely still in front of him, “that’s… that’s not even a question, Tony. I just… I just don’t know why you would want to. After everything I’ve done.” His voice wobbled toward the end, full of guilt as the memories flashed back through his head once more. Images of blood, of Tony’s pale face, broken and bruised under his hands. It wasn’t real. Steve could see from looking at Tony’ face that it wasn’t.

But it could have been. In a different universe, if things had gone differently… it could’ve been.

Tony was looking at him, trying to formulate a response. Eventually, though, he sighed. “We should talk about this another time,” he mumbled dejectedly, “I shouldn’t have said it now. It was stupid of me. Just—just relax, Steve.” He leaned forward and then moved so that he was lying down next to Steve instead, his head tucked into Steve’s shoulder as he curled up his body. “I’m here. I’m safe. And I’m not leaving.”

A billion thoughts were swirling through his mind, nearly overwhelming him. He kept replaying the words: _marry me, marry me, marry me._ He could hear them just the way Tony had spoken them, with the same inflections, the same pitch. Gift of the serum.   
Tony really wanted to marry him.

There was so much he wanted to say, and do, and talk about. But his mind was fuzzy and muddled, he felt off-kilter, too unsteady to think through all of this properly. Maybe Tony was right—maybe he just needed to… relax. Hell—seemed like they had the rest of their lives to figure everything out.

He nodded, licking his lips as he looked down at Tony and raised his hand. He paused just before it settled against Tony’s reactor though, nervous. He wasn’t sure whether Tony would want him to do that now. Put his hand right on the most vulnerable part of him.

Tony saw the movement though, and he looked up in question, so Steve stammered out a small, “can—can I?”, because he didn’t think he was going to be able to sleep without hearing it.

But there was no need to worry. Tony’s smile was soft, reverent, and he nodded his head while his own fingers wrapped around the back of Steve’s hand, guiding it toward his chest. It settled across the fabric of his shirt, and Steve shut his eyes as he let the sound of that soft thrumming swell in his ears. It was more comforting than anything else could’ve been just then, and Steve sighed quietly, nudging himself a little closer to Tony’s side. He was warm and lax, the dips and edges of his body so wonderfully familiar as they pressed against Steve.

“We’ll talk about everything in the morning,” Tony promised, “just sleep, baby.” His hand squeezed down around Steve’s, and he tilted his head backward, giving Steve access to his cheek for a little kiss. Steve was still sort of reeling from their conversation, and he had… a lot of stuff that he needed to say—but Tony was right. He was exhausted, and he didn’t have the energy to broach all the subjects just now. God, just being awake for those thirty seconds and thinking that he’d murdered Tony had been enough to just take any energy straight out of his body.

In the morning. They’d work everything out in the morning.

 

 

-

 

 

The next time Steve opened his eyes again, some considerable amount of time later, he discovered that he was already being watched.

“Hey,” Tony said softly, cheek pressed into the pillow as he looked up at Steve, “still here, still fine, still love you. Just like I promised.” He brushed a little strand of hair off Steve’s face with his pinkie finger and then smiled as Steve blinked tiredly and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.

Light streamed in through the windows on his right; what looked to be a midday sun. Steve wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but he felt… better. A little more level-headed. The events of the last few days began unfolding themselves more coherently in his head, and he took in a breath as he processed it all.

HYDRA. Brainwashing. Some panicking upon waking up. Well, a lot of panicking, really. His whole conversation with Tony—

His eyes widened a fraction as the words returned to him, and he drew his gaze back to the man in front of him as he brought back the memory of how his voice had sounded, how his eyes had shone and he’d said _marry me_ in that resolute, determined way of his.

Had that really happened, or had Steve just dreamt that? No, no, it was real. He knew it was real. It was easier for him to discern imagination from reality this time around, and he knew for a fact that that had happened. Tony had asked him. But the conversation had ended up getting sort of shelved because of Steve’s precarious mental stability, so nothing had really been…well, confirmed. If Steve was being honest, his mental stability right now was probably not at the standard it usually was (if that standard could even be called stable at all was debateable too), but he didn’t want to leave this unfinished for any longer than he had to. Tony would let it get to his head if he did, start thinking maybe Steve didn’t want to say yes.

Which was quite possibly the furthest thing from the truth that anyone could possibly be, but that was just Tony for you.

Sitting up jerkily and ignoring the irritating tug of the IV on his arm, he looked down at Tony. “Do you still want to marry me,” he breathed, voice soft. Tony sat up too, slower than him, a little more nervous as he glanced up and down again. “Is that… did you mean it? Truly?”

Tony licked his lips, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against the cot. But when he looked back toward Steve, his gaze was resolute. “Without a doubt,” he murmured, head nodding. “I want to marry you more than anything in the world, Steve. These last few days— they’ve only cemented the idea of it all.”

 _“How?_ Tony… look at what I did—”

“None of that was you, Steve, come on, don’t be dense. Anyway, God, I’m not even talking about the mission. That’s barely even relevant right now. This is just,” Tony waved his hand vaguely, “this is about you always looking out for me. It hit me in Ohio, and it’s been all I could think about since. I couldn’t… I couldn’t be half the man that I am if you weren’t with me. And I know what you think about yourself—I know you might not think you deserve my trust, or that you’re some sort of weapon or monster or whatever—but I don’t. I don’t think _any_ of that. And I… yeah. Marriage would be cool, right?”

Steve took in Tony’s face; every beautiful inch of skin and hair and soul, and then he laughed deep in his chest, leaning forward so their foreheads brushed. “It would be cool,” he agreed, “very cool.”

Tony’s beam was getting steadily wider, and Steve curled his hand around the back of his neck, fingers running through his dark hair and pulling him in an inch closer. “So is that… is that, like, confirmation? Is that—do you—”

“Yes,” Steve said, the word ending up pressed against Tony’s mouth, “the answer is yes. Obviously.”

They broke away, looking at one another slightly disbelievingly for a second. Then they laughed- loud and surprised as both of them nodded their heads at one another. Tony grabbed Steve’s hand and then leaned in again, kissing Steve hard and happily, and Steve wrapped his arm around Tony’s waist, pulling him in closer.

“Are we serious?” Tony asked breathlessly, “are we actually gonna get married?”

“I sure as hell hope so, otherwise these celebrations are gonna be a bit anticlimactic.”

Tony’s face shone. That was the only word to describe it. “Okay,” he whispered, “alright then, let’s get married. I have—I bought a ring and everything, it’s back home, I was just—probably could have done it at a better time, somewhere a little more romantic than a hospital room, but—”

“This is perfect,” Steve told him firmly, pulling Tony in until the man was sat on his lap. It stung at his waist a little-- an injury he must have picked up from somewhere recently—but he hardly even noticed, too busy kissing Tony senseless. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you too. Sorry I gave you a concussion when I brought you in.”

“Give me that ring you were talkin’ about and I’ll forgive you.”

Tony laughed, pushing Steve back down onto the bed to crawl on top of him and continue kissing in a more horizontal position. Steve smoothed his hands across Tony’s chest, ready to say something about how it really would be inappropriate to start removing pants while still in hospital, but he never quite got the chance. A second later, the door burst open and three people spilled into the room. “Steve!” Bruce called as he entered, “Steve, are you okay, your heart monitor’s going—oh.”

Tony broke off, looking behind him at Bruce, Thor and Natasha, all of whom were now glaring daggers at the pair of them from the other side of the room. “I saw your heart-rate spiking on my tablet and thought you were in trouble. We all came running to your aid,” Bruce told him, unimpressed, “turns out you just can’t keep it in your pants for more than five consecutive minutes.”

Natasha threw a cashew at them from across the room, and it hit Tony on the back of the head. “Ow,” he complained weakly.

“That’s what you get for scaring us.” Her face softened as she looked at Steve, and she tilted her head. “Seems like you’re feeling a little more chirpy, Captain.”

Steve nodded, glancing over at Tony for a second before pulling his gaze back to her. “Yeah,” he agreed with a smile, “Yeah, I am.”

“My influence,” Tony said proudly, puffing out his chest and then patting Steve’s chest.

“Well, I’m glad you were just making out with your boyfriend as opposed to dying horribly,” Thor said, patting Steve on the shoulder fondly and then turning to Bruce, “now we can return to our jenga game in the cafeteria!”

Tony raised an eyebrow, him and Steve sharing another look before Tony turned back to Thor. “It’s fiancé now, actually,” he declared nonchalantly, and Steve squeezed his hip as the happiness flowed through him. God—Fiancé. That is what Tony was to him and what he was to Tony.

All three of their friends just stared at them blankly for a moment. “Huh?” Bruce blurted, “for real?” When they both nodded at him, he blinked rapidly before breaking out into a fond little smile. “Damn, guys, that’s great. I’m really happy for you.”

“Does that mean we’re going to get to go to a wedding?” Thor asked in delight, bouncing up and down on his heels like an excited puppy. “I’ve never been to a Midgardian wedding before!”

Steve privately thought that there was probably a good reason for that—Asgardians, and Thor in particular, were hardly the easiest of guests to deal with. No doubt on the day itself, he would cause an unending flow of problems for them. But that wasn’t going to stop them from inviting him, obviously. They might just need the rest of the team to guard him a little.

Hell, what was Steve even thinking? The rest of the team were probably going to be just as bad. It was going to be a nightmare.

Steve couldn’t fucking wait.

“Okay,” Tony clapped his hands and then made a shooing motion to the three other people in the room, turning back to Steve with a sly look in his eyes, “time for you to leave again. We need to do some celebrating on our own.” He leaned back down and caught Steve’s mouth in a searing kiss, uncaring of their audience. Steve hummed in agreement, his hand sliding over Tony’s hip and then making its home on Tony’s butt.

Bruce coughed. “Actually, now that we’re here, it would probably do to just give you a bit of a checkup, see how you’re adjusting to—uh—”

“I think we’ve lost ‘em, Brucie,” Steve heard Natasha say, her voice somewhere between exasperated and amused. Steve was too busy thinking about how Tony was slowly starting to grind on him to apologise to them, and quite frankly, he didn’t even have the heart to feel guilty about it.

He was going to get _married._ To _Tony_.

He squeezed Tony’s ass, smiling as the man groaned softly, and then couldn’t help but laugh in amusement as he listened to the shuffling sounds of his friends hastily backing out of the room. “Please don’t have sex in the hospital,” Bruce pleaded with them as the door swung back open again.

Tony spared a brief moment to wave a hand at them. “No promises.”

“Don’t fight it, Bruce,” Thor said, “this may be a battle you cannot win.” There was the sound of sighing, but then the door creaked again and when Steve glanced up, the room was empty once more, their friends having swiftly left Steve and Tony to have some alone time.

 He looked at Tony, his face almost split in half from the intensity of his smile. Tony was holding Steve’s jaw in his hands, and his grin was big enough to match Steve’s own. “So,” the man’s beard brushed Steve’s cheeks as he spoke, “what’s our first act as a newly-engaged couple gonna be?”

 Steve pondered the question for a moment, thumb running back and forth absently across Tony’s skin. “I could go for some pancakes. Are we near an IHOP?”

Tony paused his kissing of Steve’s neck in order to pull a face. “You’re choosing pancakes over sex?”

“Bruce is right. I’m not having sex in hospital.”

“Well that just shows a disturbing lack of imagination. I think I may have to take back my previous offer of marriage.”

Steve snuck a hand around Tony’s wrist before he could sit up, shaking his head in amusement and pulling Tony back down for another kiss. “No takebacks now,” he informed the other man, “you’re stuck with me, Stark.”

There was a moment of quiet, where Tony simply looked down at him and ran his tongue across his lips while a billion different emotions crossed over his face. His eyes were shining like crystals in the sunlight, and his hair stuck up in places where Steve had grabbed it.

He looked so… happy.

“What a shame,” Tony leaned in again, their noses brushing, and Steve could see the smile-lines around his eyes, “I’m gonna have to wake up with you every single day for the rest of my life. Can’t believe I’m so unlucky.”

_Rest of my life._

“I think you’ll manage,” Steve whispered, his touch stroking Tony’s ring finger once more, the same way he had so many times before this, except now it was real. Now there was going to be something there.

Tony shut his eyes, like he was physically trying to burn the memory of this into his mind. When he opened them again, they looked at Steve with the sort of reverence he’d only ever seen in people at galleries, staring up at masterpieces.

“Yeah,” he murmured into Steve’s mouth, hands entwined on the bed, “I think I will.”


End file.
